Over the past few days, the media are expressing their
gratitude to the National People's Congress' Standing Committee for
eliminating the article on allowing the local governments to fine the media
for "breaking discipline to report on suddenly breaking incidents"
to "the sum of 50,000 yuan or more but not more than 100,000
yuan." But from another angle, this article actually does not
need to be removed because there are more advantages to have it there.

There are two reasons for saying so. First, this is
a predictable deal which is actually worthwhile. If we treat the
newspapers and magazines as an enterprise, we can calculate the investment
and the return. According to the previously proposed article of law,
if the media did not obey the orders from the relevant government officials
and "unilaterally" reported the truth about the suddenly breaking
incident, their revenue will definitely increase several times over.
The intangible results include the respect of their peers in the industry
and the love and esteem from their readers. The directly observable
results are the increase in rising circulation and the increase in
advertising income. The 50,000 yuan (or 100,000 yuan at the most) fine
is basically just a half-page color advertisement in the newspaper.
For most of the media in China today, this amount of fine is a
pittance. Based upon this accounting idea, the law article would give
a great deal of freedom for the media to report on suddenly breaking
incidents -- the media will just be paying a relatively small sum money to
make news reports.

Secondly, the fine can even be haggled. When the
government fines the media, it is an administrative fine. If the media
is dissatisfied, it can appeal and ask for a review by the next level of the
government. If the media is still dissatisfied, it can appeal to the
People's Court. But this kind of administrative case will draw the
attention of other media and get extensive coverage. With the public
pressure on, the relevant department may just let the case slip
instead. Now the returns for the media to report "without
approval" become even bigger, while the costs are almost zero.

But if you think about it more, you would know that the
media don't really care about the several tens of thousand yuan in
fines. Any legally stipulated fine is predictable and calculable, and
there are legal channels through which to seek remedy. The media are
really more afraid of those unpredictable and unfathomable personnel
decisions, such as dismissing the reporters, replacing the chief editor,
internal re-organization, ceasing publication, or even loss of personal
freedom as in the Pengshui SMS case. These are many such cases in the
past. As a result, this leads to the typical scenario: there is a
suddenly breaking incident; only the national and out-of-province media
could report on it whereas the local media can only publish some standard
press releases written by the local government ...

[107] The
Tangshan Armored Vehicle -- Update #1 (06/29/2007) On June 19,
2007, I translated a Chinese-language report on a 'gangster' who brazenly
paraded around the city of Tangshan in an armored vehicle (see Comment
200706#059). I had no further information on the matter beyond
the fact that this was a sensationalistic case on the Chinese Internet.

I have to remind people here -- I am not a journalist; I have no resources
to conduct any investigative journalism; I only translate the Internet
pieces that seemed to be interesting to me and/or the Chinese
netizens. Therefore, you (and I) must take my reports with a grain of
salt (and a great deal of skepticism), because some (if not much) of the
material reported on the Chinese Internet is fictional (malicious or
otherwise).

For this reason, the follow-up on this story by Peter Ford at Christian
Science Monitor was very interesting to me: Going
down a news rabbit hole in China. Indeed, if you want
resolution, you have to follow up on the story (even if the end result is
not 100% certain).

[106] Rafael
Hui's Interview (06/29/2007) The
Standard only indicated that the interview of former Hong Kong Chief
Secretary of Administration Rafael Hui was made with Shue Yan
University students, but SCMP
has more on the controversy over whom Hui chose to have the interview with:

Since taking the chief secretary's post in July 2005, Mr
Hui has rarely been interviewed. Sources said that under arrangements for
his interview with the students, the content had to be released by the
government first. The students could then publish an article on Mr Hui's
comments. This has led to claims that the administration has been trying to
manipulate the interview. Leung Tin-wai, head of the journalism and
communications department at Shue Yan University, said the interview was
finalised early this month, and the questions were prepared by himself and
students. Serenade Woo Lai-wan, who chairs the Hong Kong Journalists
Association, said the arrangement for the interview reflected that the
government wanted to deliver what it wanted.

The Chinese-language Hong Kong bloggers have some thoughts
about that choice:

So the (off-message) debate is about whether Rafael Hui was
trying to manipulate some inexperienced student journalists and make a dictation without
being subjected to any challenge. Really? Self-censorship occurs
everyday at the mainstream media inside and outside of Hong Kong. In the
real estate, finance, entertainment and consumer sections, the reports need to
consider whether important people might be offended. That is a fact of
life around the newsroom. So is it so shocking that
politics is involved in this game too? The frontline reporters never get
full control over what gets published ultimately.

The fact is that if any of the listed parties was selected by
Rafael Hui, there will be some sort of post-interview debate over the
choice. Why? Because he is known as the control freak who is only
sparingly interviewed. But the
Duke of Aberdeen blogger wondered:

Naturally, Rafael Hui made all these considerations for the
purpose of obtaining the best media effect. To use a piece of
officialese, he wanted "everything under control." Did he
succeed? Or did he achieve the opposite? Did he consider that
delivering the message in this manner might achieve the exact opposite?
Maybe he has even totally lost the bad enough already media
relationships? Rafael might have thought, "I'm leaving and I don't
have to worry about you reporters anymore. I don't care what you
reporters think of me. But I'm going to teach the pan-democrats a lesson
before I leave."

When officials are promoted to the highest level of
government (the so-called rule of Hong Kong by the Administrative Officers),
they are often criticized for being maladroit at media public relations. It
seemed merely to be a problem of bad public relations, and that is how the
so-called political cosmeticians came along.

But the problem is not about the art of cosmetics. The
real problem is the fact that the true faces of the domineering officials are
incomparably ugly to the point where the best policy is for them to see nobody and say
nothing. When they are too ugly, they go too far with the cosmetics or
interviewing arrangments and that is how they get into trouble instead.
When will they understand this?

The reality is that nobody is discussing the contents of the
Rafael Hui interview. Everybody is buzzing about the choice of the
interviewers.

Actress Cameron Diaz has issued an apology for travelling
around Peru with a bag that had the words 'Serve the People!' printed on it.
The slogan was communist icon Mao Zedong's most famous, and was in Chinese
language.

Contactmusic.com quoted Thor Halvorssen, president of the
Human Rights Foundation, as saying: 'It is bad enough that Diaz wears a bag
quoting history's most prolific butcher, but what's even worse is that she
is of Cuban heritage and really should know something about the true history
of communism. There is a double standard here that boggles the mind:
Had she worn a bag quoting Himmler or Pinochet, she would likely face career
annihilation, and rightly so.'

The bag is considered fashionable in New York. But in Peru
it is reminiscent of the Shining Path group whose armed campaign left almost
70,000 people dead.

Diaz said in a statement: 'I sincerely apologize to anyone
I may have inadvertently offended. The bag was a purchase I made as a
tourist in China, and I did not realize the potentially hurtful nature of
the slogan printed on it.'

A Truth and Reconciliation Commission (CVR), established
by interim President Valentín Paniagua, found in a 2003 report that 69,280
people had died or disappeared – 22,507 fully identified as dead and
46,773 disappearances. Shining Path was estimated to be responsible for the
death of 31,331 people. According to a summary of the report by Human Rights
Watch, "Shining Path… killed about half the victims, and roughly
one-third died at the hands of government security forces… The commission
attributed some of the other slayings to a smaller guerrilla group and local
militias. The rest remain unattributed."

...

We start by not ascribing to either Universal Declaration
of Human Rights or the Costa Rica [Convention on Human Rights], but we have
used their legal devices to unmask and denounce the old Peruvian state. . .
. For us, human rights are contradictory to the rights of the people,
because we base rights in man as a social product, not man as an abstract
with innate rights. "Human rights" don't exist except for the
bourgeoisie man, a position that was at the forefront of feudalism, like
liberty, equality, and fraternity were advanced for the bourgeoisie of the
past. But today, since the appearance of the proletariat as an organized
class in the Communist Party, with the experience of triumphant revolutions,
with the construction of socialism, new democracy and the dictatorship of
the proletariat, it has been proven that human rights serve the oppressor
class and the exploiters who run the imperialist and landowner-bureaucratic
states. Bourgeois states in general. . . . Our position is very clear. We
reject and condemn human rights because they are bourgeois, reactionary,
counterrevolutionary rights, and are today a weapon of revisionists and
imperialists, principally Yankee imperialists.

To what degree should the Chinese Communists be blamed for
the excesses of the Shining Path (and this has nothing to with Cameron Diaz's
handbag)? Well, the answer depends on which Chinese Communists do you
mean? All Chinese Communists are not alike.

On one hand, they have plenty to do with it because the
leader of Shining Path had plenty of contact with the Chinese Communists (see Al
Jazeera):

The leader of the
Shining Path was Abimail Guzman, a former philosophy professor and a
devotee of Mao who visited China many times during the Cultural Revolution.
... Guzman became an adherent of the Gang of Four - the group of
senior Chinese Communist Party figures, including Mao's wife, Jiang Qing,
who advocated a fundamentalist brand of Maoism and were later blamed for
many of the excesses of that period. ... In an interview with
the Path's El-Diario newspaper in 1988, Guzman described how he was taught
in China not only to build a political party, but also to carry out
"ambushes, attacks, military movements, as well as how to assemble
explosive devices". "For me it is an unforgettable example
and experience, an important lesson, and a big step in my development - to
have been trained in the highest school of Marxism the world has ever
seen," he said of his time there.

On the other hand,
they have nothing to do with it because President Gonzalo (=Abimail Guzman)
hated them. This was how the Shinining Path introduced themselves to the
Peruvian people in 1980 (Global
Security).

Most Peruvians first heard of Sendero Luminoso when the
citizens of Lima were confronted by the sight of dead dogs hanging from
utility poles along the principal boulevard of the city. The carcasses were
decorated with placards denouncing the "fascist dog of Deng
Xiaoping" and praising the Chinese Gang of Four.

[104] Laundry
Shop Owners Threatened in Hong Kong (06/29/2007) (Apple
Daily) Ziteng is the NGO that advocates the rights of sex
workers in Hong Kong. Yesterday, Ziteng held a press conference.
According to the Ziteng spokesperson, the Hong Kong police has been
conducted a survey of sex workers who operate single-woman brothels in the
Shumshuipo, Tsuen Wan, Yaumatei, Jordan, Wanchai and Sheungwan
districts. The survey questionnaire covered the operational model,
information about the landlord, the use of the Internet for advertising,
etc. When some of the women refused to cooperate, the police
threatened: "If you don't cooperate, then you are obstructing the
police in carrying out their duty," "You won't answer? Do
you realize that we are authorized to make an arrest?" and "If you
won't answer, then we are going to come back here every day."

After obtaining the information about the landlord, the police immediately
called the landlord and the real estate angent and asked them not to rent
the apartment out to sex workers or else they face the charge of
"renting a place out for illicit purposes."

Even more extreme than that, the police has been inviting laundry shop
operators down to the police station to assist in investigations. The
issue is that these laundry shops wash the towels for the prostitutes.
The police are warning the owners that they risk being charged with
"making a living from the earnings of prostitutes." The
Ziteng spokesperson said: "Many sex take buses or the MTR to get to
work. Shouldn't the head of the Transportation Department also be
guilty?"

The police spokesperson replied that it is not against law to sell your body
for money. But it is a serious crime to profit from prostitutes.
More than 1,000 questionnaires were completed with sex workers for the
purpose of understanding whether they have been bullied or exploited by
organized crime.

While the mainland official media are giving blanket
coverage on the incorporation of Hong Kong into the mainland ten years after
its return, Southern Weekend (a member of the Southern Daily group that has
been hailed as the leader in the reform of newspapers in China) has used an
indirect and opaque method to break through the mainland public opinion
taboo in order to showcase certain local Hong Kong features. It
described the activities of the FLG in Hong Kong, it referred indirectly to
the June 4th candlelight assembly in Victoria Park, it hinted that even
though the "Hong Kong dream" may have evaporated under the shadow
of government-business collusion, but it said that the Hong Kong's people
prides -- the freedom of speech, political tolerance and the spirit of the
rule of law -- continue to exist.

... In the latest issue of Southern Weekend, there is an
article titled <The
Hong Kong that you may not know: The rules are stronger than the
hidden rules>. The article introduces "the aspects of Hong
Kong that mainlanders may not know about." The article opens with
a description of the FLG which has been defined as an evil cult on the
mainland: "You step out of the Hung Hom train station and you will be
greeted by a mass of banners. This is enough to scare a mainlander
coming to Hong Kong for the first time. At Star Ferry, someone will
distribute flyers and booklets to you. In Hong Kong, you can see these
dissidents everywhere but you rarely see them in the mainland."
The article does not spell out that these dissidents are FLG members.
But any mainlander who has been to Hong Kong will know what this means.

Concerning the annual assembly on June 4th, the article
says: "On the first Monday of June ... when you step out of the MTR
station in Causeway Bay, there are Legislators using their microphones to
push their ideals. Various political parties or social organizations
are soliciting donations enthusiastically." Although the article
only describes the atmosphere without being specific, the date, the location
and the Legislators speaking via microphones clearly point to the June 4th
candlelight assembly.

The mainland official media are praising the high degree
of economic autonomy and the continued economic development of Hong
Kong. But Southern Weekend cites Hong Kong cultural critic Leung
Man-tao to say that the "Hong Kong dream" in which it is possible
to succeed through effort alone may have gone away for good: "Nowadays,
even taxi drivers curse out Li Ka-shing for being a bastard who is into
monopolization and government-business collusion. In the past, the
people of Hong Kong feel that rich people relied on themselves.
Now, they are beginning to hate the rich people."

[102] Youth
Daily (Taiwan) (06/28/2007) (TVBS;
TVBS)
For the common people of Taiwan, the Youth Daily is very unfamiliar.
Although Youth Daily has been in existence for more than 50 years, it is
simply not available at any of the normal distribution channels. Youth
Daily claims to be a newspaper, but it carries mostly national defense and
military news and it is very cautious about politically sensitive
issues. However, Youth Daily has one completely loyal reader in
President Chen Shui-bian, who said (October 8, 2002): "Youth Daily is
the newspaper that Ah-Bian reads every day."

What is more interesting is what Youth Daily does not report. In
August last year, the "reds" came out to demonstrate against
Ah-Bian. While that was reported in all other newspapers, Youth Daily
used a lot of pages to promote loyalty to the leader and to emphasize that
the military will never be controlled by politics.

On November 6 last year, every other newspaper reported the indictment of
First Lady Wu Shu-chen. Youth Daily had zilch.

Over the past full year, China Times and United Daily News had more than
1,000 news reports about the insider trading case of President Chen
Shui-bian's son-in-law Chao Chien-ming and others. Even the pro-green
Liberty Times had 600 to 700 reports. Youth Daily had 3 reports, which
did not refer to Chao Chien-ming as the President's son-in-law.

On this day, every major newspaper in Taiwan had the
story of the outburst by President Chen Shui-bian's daughter Chen Hsing-yu
against her father-in-law after the announcement of the results from the
second appeal. Even the pro-green newspapers ignore the possible anger
of the pan-green supporters to publish the photos of Chen Hsing-yu.
The only exception was Youth Daily, which did not print a single
world. On the front page, there was a photograph of the Commander of
the Air Force making a visit.

What kind of newspaper is it that does not carry the most important news
(according to all the other newspapers)?

Ah, but Youth Daily has an excuse. As of January 1st this year, Youth
Daily has become a specialized newspaper that will focus solely on national
defense and it will not present any politically sensitive information.
On the same day, the sports page in Youth Daily carried a report about
professional baseball players going out for entertainment at night. Is
this related to national defense? Yes, the newspaper says that this
satisfies the interest of military servicemen in sports.

On June 26, the Chinese version of World of Warcraft has
been updated to the "Before the Storm" edition. This version
had been running in the United States and Europe for one year already, and
it took that long for the Chinese version to appear.

However, Chinese WoW players were outraged by certain
changes in the game as a result of the updates. In the old version,
the dead souls were turned into skeletons. In the new version, the
dead souls have flesh and body (see photograph below for comparison of the
same character).

In the old version, the dead were strewn around as
skeletons. In the new version, the dead are represented by graves with
headstones.

The reporter interviewed the Chinese operator of WoW and
received the 'official' response: "The revision of the images of the
dead souls is based upon the situation and policy requirements in
China. These small changes were made to promote a healthy and
harmonious Internet gaming environment. It should not detract from
the users' enjoyment of the game." As for specific questions
(such as the skeletons), the person said that it was hard to respond (and
"the reporter should appreciate that").

Some users think that this one-sided interpretation of
"harmony" by the relevant government departments led to actions
that resulted in a huge reaction that was even worse for the sake of "harmony." In one public opinion poll with more than 20,000
votes, more than 90% of the users opposed the revision strongly.

How not to build democracy? The election of village
officials at Daxingzhuang village, Songzhuang town, Tongzhou district,
Beijing city has given us some clues. A week before the election,
there came the phenomenon of open sales of voter cards ... According to the
villagers, the price for voter cards "rose like a stock share with
several changes a day." The highest offer is now 600 yuan ...

Some might say that this mutually acceptable arrangement
"maximizes" the interest on both sides. The villagers
selling their votes are interested in cashing in immediately while the
candidates buying the votes are making a long-term investment. Yet,
anyone with any knowledge of democracy will know that this type of activity
will place the entire society into greater jeopardy. Democratic rights
are political rights that can be neither deprived nor transferred.
When the voter card becomes a stock share that can be bought and sold at
will, then democratic politics become a black market that is controlled by
the vote buyers ...

We also note another small detail. Compared to the
trading of voter cards, even worse are the village cadres "confiscating
voter cards for no apparent reason." Faced with these kinds of
daylight robberies, some villagers have resisted by writing messages on
their doors with chalk: "If you want to take away my voter card, you
must pay 600 yuan. This is not negotiable." Maybe this is
the most basic as well as most hapless "transaction between power and
money." But here, the money is only a small favor but the power
is the "civil right."

Why are villagers so willing to sell their voter cards in
their hands? Some people find it easy to offer the "reason that
everybody knows about" -- the peasants "are greedy for the small
sum of money" and are "short-sighted." ... If we dig
deeper, we will discover that this so-called "reason" is actually
the consequence of another reason -- in our world, the voters do not see any
advantage worth more than 600 yuan from "democracy." In
other words, the real problem that we have to confront is that
"democracy is not worth 600 yuan."

When the legal system is non-existent, democracy is
meaningless. When village officials can walk into a villager's home
and take their voter card, the villagers lose faith in democracy. The
villagers figure that even if they don't sell their votes, other voters
will. In this game-theoretic contest, it is the wealthy vote-buyers
who get the last laugh.

... Since democracy has become a trading activity with the
wealth people and since the voters regard their ballots as waste paper, then
600 yuan is a good price. In that sense, there is an inner logic for
the villagers to make the 'short-sighted' choice of selling their votes ...

How do you stop this? The first thing is to make the
villagers believe in democracy. If the voters think that their votes
have nothing to do with their lives and the act of voting is a pointless
participatory act, then there is no hope for democratic elections.
Even if we can find some way of convincing the voters not to sell their
votes, we may encounter the embarrassing situation in which nobody shows up
to cast their votes.

[099] More
About The Tengzhou City Government Building (06/28/2007) I
have translated
long Beijing News article placed it at the bottom of The
Tengzhou City Government Office Building. At this time, it seemed
certain that this was a hoax perpetrated by a fake reporter. This man
claimed to be the Jinan bureau chief of <Legal System Morning News>
when the said newspaper has gone out of business last year. Therefore,
if his press card said so, then he is a fake. The case had to do with
someone working for him being arrested for an "economic
crime." Apparently, this worker actually believed that he was a
genuine news reporter because his boss gave him a press card. When the
client asked him to go down to the police station, the worker went willingly
along. Of course, the police looked up the Internet database, found
out that the worker was a fake and arrested him. In order to save the
worker, the boss perpetrated an Internet hoax to make the worker look like a martyr
for the freedom of speech/press and mobilize public opinion to force his
release. Here is the most interesting part of the story:

With the confirmation that this was a
rumor, certain web portals began to delete the posts that carried the
rumor. But the deletion of the posts created greater netizen anger and
the criticisms became more vehement. The Tengzhou publicity department
organized people to make large number of posts to clarify, but their voices
were quickly drowned out.

"There was nothing that we could do
now. We are too small compared to the hundreds of millions of netizens
out there," said an official with the Tengzhou city publicity
department.

[098] Hong
Kong Laden Sentenced (06/28/2007) (The
Sun) The man known as Hong Kong's Osama bin Laden has been
sentenced to nine months in prison for issuing terroristic threats against
the newspaper Oriental Daily (see Hong Kong Laden On Trial
for case background.

Who is this man? What was going through his mind? Here is a
special feature from Oriental Daily (via The
Sun):

In the case 5-1/2 years ago in which Ma Chiu-sing
threatened to poison supermarket foods, it was believed that this was an
extreme action that he took in order to express his dissatisfaction with
Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa. But his background did not contain any
indication of extremism. When he graduated from high school, he joined the
Department of Corrections and then left for no reason. He learned
hair-dressing from his elder brother and joined the auxiliary police.
In 1992, he started his own hair salon. He was involved in real estate
speculation like many of his fellow citizens. It is doubtful whether
he committed the crime for political extremism.

The fact that Ma Chiu-shing joined the Department of
Corrections and the auxiliary police shows that he has an interest in the
discipilinary forces, but it was hard to understand why he left those
forces. During the past two decades, he kept switching jogs and this
has to make people wonder if he has some other identity.

According to information, the Political Department of the
Hong Kong Royal Police during the British colonial administration had many
special agents burrowed in various social strata in Hong Kong. These
people are responsible for collecting information and carrying out special
missions. Furthermore, Beijing, Taiwan and even western countries also
planted large number of special agents in Hong Kong. Superficially,
these agents looked just like other citizens. After the return of Hong
Kong to China, some of these people went into retirement but some are still
conducting underground activities on behalf of various political forces and
they will carry out sabotage following orders at various times.

In reality, some people speculated that Ma Chiu-sing and
even the infamous "devil policeman" Tsui Poko may not be those
types of people. But these speculations can neither be confirmed nor
denied ...

Some time within the next month or so the government will
issue a report outlining three general options for bringing full democracy
to Hong Kong. Tsang has made 60% public support the target for any measure
that he will push forward. But Hong Kong's desire for full democracy is
strong, and it is likely that more than one proposal will surpass the 60%
barrier. He admitted as much in
a recent interview. Earlier this week a
poll by Hong Kong University indicated that 57% of the population
supports a proposal by the pan-democrats on choosing the next Chief
Executive. Tsang will be forced to choose which plan he backs from several
equally popular proposals. The task of explaining why one is better than the
other will not be easy. And the stakes are high. Tsang, in a notably poor
choice of words, said he would find a "final
solution" for bringing full democracy to Hong Kong. Whether he can
match that pledge or not will be the performance review that really matters.

Now I have not cited that HKU POP poll because it is so
weird in terms of the questions. I thought that it was going to create
more problems than not if I cited it. But now that the survey has been
cited, it is probably necessary to address it. So here are the exact survey questions
and the corresponding results:

Q1. Regarding the Chief
Executive election in 2012, it is proposed that 400 directly elected
district councillors should be added to the existing 800-member Election
Committee, adding up to a total of approximately 1,200 committee members.
The number of subscribers required should be 50% regardless of the sector
they belong to. The Chief Executive should ultimately be elected by
universal suffrage. Do you support or oppose this proposal?

Support: 57%
Half-half: 17%
Oppose: 14%
Don't know/hard to say: 13%

Q2. Regarding the Legislative
Council election in 2012, it is proposed that a mixed election model would
be adopted, whereby half of the seats would be returned by a "single
seat single vote" simple majority system. The other half of the seats
would be returned through elections by the "proportional representation
system" so that each voter can cast two votes. Do you support or oppose
this proposal?

Support: 45%
Half-half: 18%
Oppose: 15%
Don't know/hard to say: 22%

Q4. It is proposed that a sort
of prior vetting mechanism would be added to the Chief Executive election to
secure the acceptance of candidates by the Central government. Then the
Chief Executive would be elected by the public on a
"one-person-one-vote" basis. Do you support or oppose to this kind
of prior vetting mechanism?

Support: 45%
Half-half: 18%
Oppose: 25%
Don't know/hard to say: 11%

Q5. There is another proposal
that a prior communication channel would be added to the Chief Executive
election, instead of a prior vetting mechanism. That means those who would
like to stand for the Chief Executive election had to communicate with the
Central government first through this sort of channel before they could turn
to be candidates, lest the Chief Executive selected by the public would gain
no acceptance from the Central government. Do you support or oppose to the
setting up of this sort of prior communication channel?

Support: 52%
Half-half: 14%
Oppose: 25%
Don't know/hard to say: 9%

On Q1, I personally got thoroughly
confused because a number of different issues were brought up in a
package. I will say that I cannot reduce to this survey question to
just: "The
Chief Executive should ultimately be elected by universal suffrage" which
has a 57% support level. For example, if I am completely for 100% direct
election of the Chief Executive, why should I be kidnapped to support the
addition of 400 district councilors into the Election Committee? I don't
even want any stinking Election Committee -- I want a direct election!
Get it!!!???

On top of this, I have to add the nuances
introduced in Q4 an Q5. Those responses just do not match my
understanding of free and open universal suffrage -- the people of Hong Kong
are apparently willing to accept interference from the central government
about their choice for the Chief Executive! However, I am not accepting
this as truth because I need more evidence besides a very complicated and convoluted
survey questionnaire.

[096] Chen Hsing-yu Roars
(06/27/2007) President Chen Shui-bian's son-in-law saw his sentence
for insider trading raised from six years to seven years yesterday.
Today, President Chen Shui-bian's daughter Chen Hsing-yu showed up at work
with blood-shot eyes after waking up 4am in the morning. She was met
in front of her office by television reporters. Here is what she said about
her father-in-law Chao Yu-chu: "I hate that person. He wouldn't
accept responsiblity for what he did. That type of person ought to
commit suicide ... I have not met with him for a whole year already. He
is not worthy of meeting me."

Chen Hsing-yu had a number of previous run-in's with reporters. Here are some video clips:

In many cases, she was provoked into reacting so strongly. The last
clip above occurred after her marriage was announced and then some
television channel reported that she was pregnant already. This
outburst inspired a television spoof:

[095] Deal
Or No Deal (06/27/2007) (The
Sun) "Deal or No Deal" is the name of a game show on
Hong Kong's TVB. As with these types of shows, the contestants are
randomly drawn from different walks of life. Last Sunday, I happened
to watch the last episode in which one of the contestants was a police
woman. She brought along three 'advisors' -- her mother, her brother
(also a police man) and her boyfriend (also a police man). In between
the rounds, the three police officers were questioned about their jobs (e.g.
the manner by which undercover police officers are required to carry their
guns; their assignments during the WTO-MC6 when one guarded the American
consulate while another was undercover among the demonstrators in order to
monitor the Korean farmers).

Yes, but so what? Well, there has been three complaints lodged with
the Television and Broadcasting Licensing Authority against "Deal Or No
Deal." The complaints said that (1) the program insulted Korean
farmers and (2) divulged confidential information about the case in which
the gun of a police officer was taken away by force. TELA has
forwarded the information to the police for investigation.

[094] The
Folk Guy and the Counter-attack (06/27/2007) For the tenth
anniversary of the return of Hong Kong to the People's Republic of China,
the Hong Kong SAR government produced a harmonious positive message in the
music video "Always
With You." This video was shown on broadcast
television. But this kind of mainstream propagandistic material will never draw
any interest among the people through video sites such as YouTube.

As a spoof, the blogger Lam Kay produced the video "Folk
Guy's Always With You." Lam Kay belongs to the
pan-democratic camp and this version is highly critical of the Hong Kong SAR
and the central governments. The spoof version manages to accumulate
many more hits on YouTube than the official version.

As a spoof on a spoof, some unidentified person has produced a video for the
same song but from a thoroughly anti-democratic viewpoint (see

For Lam Kay's spoof video, the comments were celebratory for being able to go one-up
against the official version. Of course, the government will never
respond to a spoof. There are apparently no copyright issues with
respect to the original song "Always With You." You can spoof
as much as you want to.

So what happens with the counter-attack?

First, there cannot be any copyright violation. If "Folk Guy's
Always With You" was a spoof on "Always With You" and that was
okay, then a spoof on a spoof has to be okay too.

Second, the spoof on the spoof is of inferior quality compared to the spoof
(e.g. the visual images, the rhyming in the song's lyrics, etc). Well,
this just means that you don't understand what spoofs are about. Once
upon a time, Chen Kaige spent a few hundred milliion yuan making the movie
known as "The Promise" with very expensive "production
values." Along came some nobody named Hu Ge making a spoof titled
"The
Bloody Case That Started From A Steamed Bun" with inferior
quality and no cost. But the whole point of spoofing is to demean an
expensive (but vacuous) production with an obviously inferior product that
points out the vacuity of the original production. If you don't
understand this point and want to continue to argue about the quality of the
spoof, then you are missing the point and making things so much worse for
yourself (like Chen Kaige did until he finally got it in his head and gave up
the planned lawsuit agaisnt Hu Ge.). In fact, the more you moan about
being spoofed, the more famous your spoofer becomes.

Third, the comments to the spoof on the spoof were loaded with accusations of
"Communist cadres" and "Internet agents." This is a
measure of tolerance in a multicultural, diversified society. The Hong
Kong SAR government produced a video and you make a scathing spoof out of
it. That is accepted as an expression of freedom of speech.
Someone else makes a spoof of your spoof and all you can do is hammer out a
lot of labels that are intended to intimidate? Will you look up their IP
addresses and track down and expose their real names and job positions?
The correct (and democratic) thing to do is to shrug and let the public
decide for themselves. The harder you go after this anonymous spoofer, the
worse case you make for your 'democracy.'

[093] Yumiko's
Nipples (06/27/2007) Do not kid yourself about whether anybody
cares about the fate of Paul Morris at the Hong Kong Institute of
Education! The biggest news in Hong Kong is about Yumiko
Cheng's nipples. Previously, she had been famous in the trapeze act
during which her pants fell off (see Comment
200612#046). On June 23, Yumiko sang in Toronto (Canada) and
her tube top slipped down during the performance to expose her nipples for
about one full minute. During this time, she even raised her arms
while the television camera gave her nipples a close-up.

[This screen capture was published in Apple
Daily, which masked Yumiko's left nipple because it does not want to
incur the wrath of the Society for Truth and Light, the Television and
Entertainment Licensing Authority and the Obscene Articles Tribunal.]

Shortly afterwards, some netizen posted that video clip on YouTube but it
was deleted "because the post violated the user rules."
Immediately, many more netizens rushed to post the same video clip (see, for
example, Yumiko

露點;
if this link doesn't work, you can probably search on the keyword 'Yumiko 露點'
and find more posts).

According to Apple
Daily, Hong Kong Discussion Forum has set up a special zone for this
case and it drew over 60,000 visits in one day. What can they possibly
be talking about? On one hand, the question is why is Yumiko such a
repeated offender? Her pants slipped off in December and her tube top
slid down now. What is her problem? Or is she deliberately trying
to gain notoriety? On the other hand, the news reports are that she
cried 17 hours straight on her flight from Toronto back to Hong Kong?
Oh, the poor thing! One way or the other, this is the stuff for news (in
Chinese-language media in Hong Kong but the English-language media may never
tell you so).

[092] Hong
Kong/Taiwan By The Numbers (06/26/2006) (TVBS)
(963 persons age 20 or older interviewed in Taiwan by TVBS on June 13-15;
1,026 persons age 18 or older interviewed in Hong Kong by HKU POP on June
18-22)

Q1. Hong Kong has been under "One County, Two
Systems" for ten years. Overall, do you feel that the people of
Hong Kong are better, worse or the same compared to before the return? (Base:
Taiwan residents)Better: 17% (compared to 5% in TVBS survey conducted in June 1997)
The same: 34% (compared to 54% in June 1997)
Worse: 16% (compared to 33% in June 1997)
Don't know: 33% (compared to 8% in June 1997)

Q2. Overall, do you think that the economic development
of Hong Kong now is better, worse or the same compared to before the return?
(Base: Taiwan residents)Better: 32% (compared to 12% in June 1997)
The same: 31% (compared to 51% in June 1997)
Worse: 17% (compared to 29% in June 1997)
Don't know: 21% (compared to 8% in June 1997)

Q3. Overall, do you think the development of democracy in
Hong Kong now is better, worse or the same compared to before the return?
(Base: Taiwan residents)Better: 10%
The same: 40%
Worse: 30%
Don't know: 20%

Q4. Ten years after the return, do you think that
"One Country, Two Systems" has been successfully implemented in Hong
Kong? (Base: Taiwan residents)Very successful: 4%
Somewhat successful: 34%
More or less okay: 9%
Somewhat unsuccessful: 13%
Very unsuccessful: 10%
Hard to say: 31%

Q5. Under "One Country, Two Systems," how
confident are you about the future economic development of Hong Kong?

Q7. Overall, do you think "One Country, Two
Systems" is suitable for Taiwan?

Hong Kong residents: Suitable: 52%
Not suitable: 33%
Don't know: 15%

Taiwan residents:Suitable: 21%
Not suitable: 53%
Don't know: 26%

Q8. Do you agree with setting up a "One
Country, Two Systems" relationship between Taiwan and mainland China
(that is, according to the Hong Kong model)? (Base: Taiwan residents)Agree: 23% (compared to 36% in June 1997)
Disagree: 55% (compared to 54% in June 1997)
Don't know: 21% (compared to 10% in June 1997)

Q9. If there is a choice, would you rather Hong
Kong be a British colony or a Special Administrative Region of China?

Q13. Self-identity of the people of Taiwan over
time. [Explanation: The green line is for "Taiwanese"; the
dark blue line is for "Taiwanese and Chinese"; the purple line is
for "Chinese." The dates (YY/MM/DD) in the series are counted
from the founding year of the Republic of China (1911). For example,
96/6/15 is June 15, 2007.]

[091] Andy
Lau PK CCTV - Part 2 (06/26/2006) In Andy
Lau PK CCTV - Part 1, the CCTV program <The Same Song>
production team was reported boycotting actor/singer Andy Lau because he had
refused to participate in the program. The overwhelming Internet storm
against CCTV forced the <The Same Song> to declare that there was no
boycott (which means that they need to invite Andy Lau on the show at some
point to demonstrate the fact).

Part 2 involves another CCTV program <Chinese Love>. Previously,
the program had put on a show in Kansu and the local hosts asked for an
appearance by Andy Lau. The producers refused to invite Andy Lau, and
this led to talk about whether a CCTV boycott of Andy Lau is in place.

The producer of <Chinese Love> Guo
Jihong posted on her blog this defense: A while ago, the tragedy of
Lanzhou (Kansu) resident Yang Lijun's star chasing caused me to feel sorrow
and sympathy. I can understand why Yang Lijun was obsessed, but the
tragedy that occurred during the process make us ponder. To invite
Andy Lau to Kansu is bound to re-ignite the 'Yang Lijun star-chasing affair'
and make matters worse. This is against my inner principles."

While Guo's explanation clears up that there is no CCTV boycott of Andy Lau,
her position did not get much sympathy either. (KDNet)
A netizen wrote: "Really, I cannot believe how she can be a CCTV
director. She could not even tell a good lie. Everybody knows
that Yang Lijun is sick and it has nothing to do with Andy Lau. Why
don't you just say, 'Yang Lijun is a mainlander and Andy Lau better not to
the mainland again in order to avoid unnecessary trouble.' Wow, how
could anyone come up with such a stupid reason."

While this affair is referred to as Andy Lau PK CCTV, Andy Lau actually has
done little of anything. Instead, this is the media behemoth CCTV
versus the Internet citizens. But since the battleground is the realm
of public opinion on the Internet, CCTV was vastly outnumbered.

[090] Art
Imitates Life (06/26/2006) As I have
often said, there is no telling which pages on this website become
popular. For the month of June, the runaway leader is Sweeping The Yellow
(

扫黄).
That may not be surprising, but the referrers are -- a circle of Iranian
websites (e.g. IranianUK.com).
The lead photograph in the page is this one:

This is in fact the inspiration for a piece of pop sculture (see KDNet):

[089] Telephone
Manipulation of the DPP Polls (06/26/2007) The primary
election within the Democratic Progressive Party for nomination to the
Legislature election depend partially on public opinion poll results.

In Taipei County District #4, Tsai Lai-wang led Wu Ping-jui by 10% in the
polling. According to information from Chungwah Telecom, Tsao had
applied for 450 temporary telephone lines, of which 41 received calls from
the polling companies. In addition, among those telephones that
supported Tsao, 42 were new telephone lines (beyond those applied personally
by Tsao) and 41 came from forwarded calls. Thus, there could be as
many as 124 questionable responses. The three public opinion polling
companies had almost 2,000 valid responses (i.e. after filtering out the
pan-blue supporters), so 124 is approximately 6%. Since Tsao receives
an extraodinary 80% support among persons age 20-24, that 6% could be as
much as 11% after the samples are weighted by age (note: age 20-24 are
usually under-represented in the raw sample and must be weighted up).
If you take that 11% away from Tsao, then the election may swing over to Wu.

In Kaohsiung City District #3, Lin Chin-hsing led Lee Kun-tse by 10% in the
polling. According to information from Chungwah Telecom, Lin had
applied for 82 temporary telephone lines, of which 9 received calls from the
polling comapnies. In addition, among those telephones that supported
Lin, 27 were temporary lines (beyond those applied personally by Lin) and 23
came from forwarded calls. Thus, there could be as many as 59
questionable responses. If these people respond that they are in the
age 20-29 group, then each response would be weighted by a ratio of 3.3 to
3.5. Thus the 59 questionnable responses culd be worth about 200 after
weighting. In the valid sample (i.e. after filtering out the pan-blue
supporters), there are about 2,000 responses. 200 out of 2,000 is
approximately 10%. If you take that 10% away from Lin, the election
may swing over to Lee.

[Note: This is tricky because the assumption is that all the questionable
responses are foul. In practice, there can be legitimate new lines and
forwarded calls. Furthermore, there is no data presented for the
number of new lines/forwarded calls for the other side.]

[088] Second
Hearing Verdict For Chao Chien-ming (06/26/2007) (UDN)
Previously, Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian's son-in-law Chao Chien-ming was
tried and found guilty of insider trading scandal of Taiwan Development
Corporation shares. Also found guilty in the same trial were his
father Chao Yu-chu, former Taiwan Development Corporation chairman Su
Teh-jien and real estate developer Yu Shih-yi.

Given what was thought to be severe sentences, the four appealed to have a
second hearing. The verdict came out this morning.

Chao Chien-ming's sentence went from 6 years of imprisonment to 7 years,
with the fine of N$30,000,000 remaining the same as before.

Chao Yu-chu's sentence went from 8 years 4 months to 9 years 6 months, with
the fine of NT$30,000,000 remaining the same as before.

Yu Shih-yi's sentence went from 4 years 3 months to 7 years 2 months, with
the fine of NT$60,000,000 remaining the same as before.

Su Teh-jien's sentence went from 4 years 3 months to 7 years 6 months, with
an additional fine of NT$30,000,000.

Why the increase in penalties? The court determined that the illicit
gains were in excess of NT$100,000,000 and therefore the penalties should be
adjusted in accordance with the sentencing guidelines.

Unlike the recent court case about the Kaohsiung mayoral election, there is
no cry about "the darkest day in the judicial history of
Taiwan." The Presidential Office has no comment. (BCC)The
Democratic Progressive Party says that Chao Chien-ming has expressed regret
and is even working as a volunteer doctor, so it was hard to understand how
the second trial could end up with such a verdict.

[087] A
Chinese Student in Paris (06/25/2007) (UDN via Wenxue
City) The former Beijing News reporter and current student in
France named Situ Beichen wrote today to the United Daily News

I have the habit that no matter where I go, I will try to
chat with the local young people in order to understand the local mores and
make friends.

I have met some students from Taiwan here. When I
speak to them, many people are polite but there seems to be an invisible
barrier like the Taiwan strait. Finally, there was an open clash after
which I seem to understand the source of that estrangement.

On that day, I came across some Taiwan students at the
student cafeteria. One of them is the a classmate in the reading
class. She always wears to smile and speaks lightly. I asked her
what she thought about the diplomatic wars across the strait. She said
that China is too big for Taiwan to fight. From a practical viewpoint,
I agree with Ma Ying-jeou's idea that Taiwan can have more international
space by negotiating with China. But how come Taiwan can only join the
WTO and the Olympics but nothing else? This is no doubt the disastrous
result of the DPP's "flames of war everywhere" diplomatic
approach.

France had just held its election, and I said that I
wanted to go and observe the 2008 and 2012 election in Taiwan. I joked
that if the DPP were to win again and continue down the present path, it is
hard to say whether there will be war or peace in 2012.

"War? You get lost!" A woman on the
right hand side screamed at me. "Why are you sitting next to
me? We are all Taiwanese people here and you are the only
Chinese," she continued.

"Where do you think you are? This is a
university student cafeteria in France. Besides, was I talking to you
before?" I told her. She had nothing to say and eventually
left.

Are young people in Taiwan unwilling to sit down and
discuss these problems with mainland people of the same age, just as the
media said? I think most of them are not like that. If we won't
think about the future across the strait and the future of Taiwan, who will?

Since the political systems and the social developments
are different, many mainland Chinese young people admire the freedom of
speech and freedom of press in Taiwan. But if the result of these
freedoms is bigotry, isolation and intolerance, then it is hard to say
whether this is the failure of democracy or personal failure.

Baed upon my previous professional experience, the
mainland media carry much more coverage about the world than the media in
Taiwan. This made people think about the large issues of society and
create a more open attitude. This is basically not the image of
mainland China that the Taiwanese people get from their own media. We
are willing to understand Taiwan, so why shouldn't the young people of
Taiwan be willing to understand the mainland?

Blood and tears are flowing from
the case of Shanxi brick kiln slaves. Among the confusing information,
I read the following item: the wife of the kiln owner said that "they
knew nothing about the lives of the kiln workers" and "they were
deceived by the subcontractor." (as reported in the <Yanzhao Metro
News>)/

The person who said those words is
the wife of the brick kiln owner Wang Bingbing, who is the son of the party
secretary in Caosheng village, Guangshengsi town, Hongdong county, Shanxi
province.

In this photograph, Wang Bingbing's wife certainly looks
infinitely better than those kiln slaves ... According to her logic,
everyone in the chain of logic may be innocent. The kiln owner, the
subcontractor and even those henchmen who killed or crippled the kiln slaves
have their excuses. The officials at the various local government
levels are also innocent and have no responsibilities whatsoever.

Let us suppose that the daughter-in-law of the senior
cadre in Caosheng village knew nothing. But she must have seemed the
tragic sight of the kiln slaves in the media (newspapers and
television). If such is the case, how could she remain so calm as to
show no trace of emotion? Even more shocking than the conditions of
the kiln slaves is the calm expression of the daughter-in-law of the senior
cadre in Caosheng village.

With respect to the case of the kiln slaves, public
opinion is directed towards the local government officials and the problems
with the system in general. The kiln slaves revealed a severe wound in
the economic rise of the nation, as lauded as "China Rising" by
TIME magazine ...

Perhaps we can only blame this on the price that has to be
paid during the process of modernization. But this price is too
heavy. None of us can make this kind of disaster disappear
immediately. We can only pray that it will be less -- a lot less

... Over the past several days, something has been going
through my mind ... I made a hypothesis: Suppose I was born in Caosheng village
(Shanxi province) and my father was the village party secretary. Could
I become a kiln owner? Would my wife calmly and shamelessly stand in
front of the public and present the worst aspects of human nature?

I am not sure. I am really not sure ...

[084] Shooter
Shot Dead (06/24/2007) With respect to the case of the
assassination of Taipei County Councilor Wu Shan-chiu
(see Comment 200705#084), there
has been a major development (UDN).

According to the police, at around
11:30pm last night, the police set up a temporary inspection post in Taipei
city. They observed a male with a handbag who attempted to elude the
police. When the police officers moved towards the male, he tossed his
handbag and fled. The police gave pursuit and the man took out a gun
and fired seven shots. The police called for reinforcement and had the
man cornered in a parking lot. As the police approached, the man fired
several shots while the police returned fire. When the man saw that he
could not possibly escape, he shot himself in the temple. The police
checked the identification on his person and confrimed that it was Lan Chia-wei,
who is the alleged assassin of Taipei county councilor Wu Shan-chiu.
The handbag that was discarded contained a large amount of cash.

Of course, conspiracy theorists will
always wonder whether this was the right person or a dupe. Here are the
photographs -- the suspect as captured on closed circuit television is shown
on the left and the ID photo of the suspect is shown on the right. It is
the same person, right? Or are you a conspiracy theorist?

[083] Existence
Determines Consciousness (06/24/2007) (Ming Pao) At the
presentation of Hong Kong SAR chief executive Donald Tsang's new cabinet,
the reporters directed the first five questions at Tsang Tak-sing because of
his leftist background.

(Ming Pao)
When asked about what he would propose to do about civic education, he said:
"Let me use an old saying: 'Existence determines consciousness

存在決定意識.'
I feel that over the ten years since Hong Kong was returned, the people of
Hong Kong has increased their identification with and knowledge about the
nation ... As to how to increase the citizen's understanding of the nation,
that is worthy of more discussion."

"Existence determines consciousness"? This made the reporters
scramble for the source to determine that it came from Karl Marx and Friedrich
Engels' The
German Ideology:

In direct contrast to German philosophy
which descends from heaven to earth, here we ascend from earth to heaven.
That is to say, we do not set out from what men say, imagine, conceive, nor
from men as narrated, thought of, imagined, conceived, in order to arrive at
men in the flesh. We set out from real, active men, and on the basis of
their real life-process we demonstrate the development of the ideological
reflexes and echoes of this life-process. The phantoms formed in the human
brain are also, necessarily, sublimates of their material life-process,
which is empirically verifiable and bound to material premises. Morality,
religion, metaphysics, all the rest of ideology and their corresponding
forms of consciousness, thus no longer retain the semblance of independence.
They have no history, no development; but men, developing their material
production and their material intercourse, alter, along with this their real
existence, their thinking and the products of their thinking. Life is not
determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life. In the first method
of approach the starting-point is consciousness taken as the living
individual; in the second method, which conforms to real life, it is the
real living individuals themselves, and consciousness is considered solely
as their consciousness.

One way to think about this is that the Hong Kong citizen's
understanding of China cannot be imposed from the outside through 'civic
lessons.' Instead, their understanding depends on their interaction with
mainland China and its people. To borrow the slogan from the famous Hong
Kong blog on
Japan,

哈中反中不如知中
(It is better to know China instead of just loving or hating it).

[082] The
Weihai 'Mass Incident' (06/24/2007) (Boxun)
In Wendeng city, Weihai region, Shandong province, kindergarten teachers
conducted a sit-in outside their school early morning on June 18. The
land on which the kindergarten had recently been sold by the city.
During the process, the teachers found out that their previous employee had
never paid their social security and retirement contributions, so that they
may lose their jobs without any of those benefits.

At around 1pm, around 30 police officers appeared at the scene and they
stood around chatting and smoking cigarettes. As if by prior
arrangement, a dozen or so young man with outside accents showed up and
promptly assaulted the teachers. There were screams, cries and shrieks
as the beating continued for about 15 minutes. During the entire
process, the 30 or so police officers stood aside, with some of them even
exchanging knowing smirks with each other. Finally, the ambulances
were called and the attackers dispersed. A medical worker asked two
police officers to assist in putting a teacher onto a stretcher, but the two
officers just turned their heads away.

The inclusion of the only patriotic loyalist in the new
ruling team, Central Policy Unit adviser Tsang Tak-sing - a former
journalist - will ensure greater integration with the mainland and
cross-border cooperation. But his main job will be to push ahead the
social enterprises pledged by Tsang during his election campaign.

There is much more in the Chinese-language newspapers about
Tsang Tak-sing's history. The following episode is most frequently
mentioned (see Apple Daily, for example):

Tsang Tak-sing was a student at the English-language high
school St. Paul's College. On September 28, 1967, Tsang
distributed 375 inflammatory flyers that basically said: "The British
colonial administration in Hong Kong has oppressed our compatriots
politically; they will not allow us to love our country; they used brutal
methods to effect fascist suppression of our patriotic compatriots; they
also implement an educational system that turns out slaves." The
police received a report and entered the school campus to investigate.
They took Tsang Tak-sing down to the police station.

"At the time, he was distributing the prefect's
armband when he distributed the flyers. A student saw him and reported
to the priest. The priest called the police. Many students
witnessed his arrest," said a St. Paul's alumnus. According to
this source, 18-year-old Tsang Tak-sing was taken back to the police station
where he could have released if he would sign a document to say that he was
sorry. Tsang refused and he was physically assaulted by the police and
subsequently charged.

... About a couple of weeks later, Tsang Tak-sing was
charged in court. The prosecutor read out the charges and Tsang
pleaded not guilty. The judge found Tsang guilty and sentenced him to
two years in imprison. Tsang's father attended the court and the judge
asked him if he wanted to say anything. Tsang's father only said:
"My son did the right thing." In the verdict, the judge
wrote that Tsang was being stupid. As a student with an excellent
academic record and ready to enter university, he has just destroyed his own
career and he had no one else to blame.

The Apple Daily provided some background context about the
1967 leftist riots in which there were strikes, demonstrations, riots and
"pineapples" (improvised explosive devices) that led to 51 deaths
and more than 800 injuries (many of whom were innocent citizens). But
that is the background. Was Tsang Tak-sing thrown in jail for two years
because of his personal action, or for the background?

"Mr. Cinema", a Hong Kong film
starring Anthony Wong, Karen Mok, Teresa Mo and Ronald Cheng, will debut in
late June. The film aims to reflect the persevering spirit of the Hong
Kong people by telling the story of a Hong Kong projectionist's family over
a 40-year period from 1967 to 2007. Veteran actor Anthony Wong plays
the part of the projectionist, Teresa Mo and Ronald Cheng his wife and son,
and Karen Mok as Ronald Cheng's girlfriend.

This is very misleading because this film was not about a
typical Hong Kong citizen. The original Chinese-language title

老左正傳 might be translated as: "The
Life of an Old Leftist" and its former English-language title was
"Call Me Left." For the movie review, read lovehkfilm.com.
Here is the bottom line:

Basically, if you're looking for political
and historical accountability, then Mr. Cinema will absolutely
disappoint, and could even be viewed as irresponsible filmmaking. However,
if you're just looking for something that's touching, bittersweet, and feels
uniquely Hong Kong, then Mr. Cinema is a quality time at the movies.

Is it too much to say that a movie is 'irresponsible' with
respect to 'political and historical accountability'? That is because it
is impossible to discuss the evolution of a Hong Kong leftist without certain
landmark events and one of these (and arguably the most significant
contemporary one) was omitted. More from lovehkfilm.com.

Mr. Cinema is very guilty of
something that we'll call "selective history". Generally, the film
portrays history accurately, using it as a way to define its characters and
their growth. However, one event that greatly affected Hong Kong goes
suspiciously unmentioned: the Tiananmen Square Massacre of 1989. The reason
for the omission is obvious; after all, this is a film meant to celebrate
the Hong Kong-China reunion, and nearly twenty years later Tiananmen Square
is still a touchy subject in the Mainland. The censors can breathe easy; in Mr.
Cinema, the event is ignored, and judging by character reaction, may
never have taken place at all. That's a bit of a problem. Given Zhou's
ardent desire to visit Tiananmen, and the film's running joke of how he
never finds the chance to visit, the omission comes off as a disservice.
Frankly, to gain a complete portrait of Zhou Heung-Kong and his family,
Tiananmen Square needs to be there. We're getting a deliberately watered
down history in Mr. Cinema; the Hong Kong on display is more than
just rose-colored - it may be willingly blind.

The significance of Tiananmen Square for the Hong Kong
leftists can be shown in terms of what the movie showed. For a long
time, whenever major events occurred in China (e.g. the fall of the Gang of
Four, etc), the leftists met and were debriefed by their leaders (e.g. Xinhua
people who directed the underground party) about the correct line. With
respect to Tiananmen Square, even those leaders were marching in Hong Kong
themselves.

[079] The
Story of Heng Tinghan (06/24/2007) In The
History of the Illegal Brick Kiln in Hongdong, the focus was on brick
kiln owner Wang Bingbing. For the first couple of years, Wang was
losing money because he could not bring his labor costs down. Then he
met the subcontractor Heng Tinghan, who found a way of exploiting underage
and mentally impaired persons. But this report did not say too much
about Heng Tinghan.

(Ta Kung
Pao) Here is a brief report about the history of Heng
Tinghan.

He came from Hengying village, Xizhou
county, Henan province. The village was an ordinary one in which the
families owned farming cattle. Heng Tinghan was the first one to come
up with the idea of buying and selling farming cattle. He was in
charge of the sales activities while his younger brother was the enforcer
who collected bad debts.

At some time after 1995, the cattle business was in decline. So Heng
Tinghan looked instead to the labor subcontracting business at the Shanxi
brick kilns. He began to con local Henen workers to go work in
Shanxi. He told the villagers that he had powerful connections in
Shanxi where labor subcontracting is a hugely profitable busienss. He
promised to help other villagers to become subcontractors. This was
how it came to be that most illegal brick kilns owners and subcontractors in
Shanxi hailed from Xizhou county (Henan province).

[078] The
Xinyi SMS Messages (06/24/2007) (MOP)
In March or April this year, there was a case of a female student being
kidnapped and raped by persons in a white van in the city of Xinyi
(Guangdong province). There has been no such cases since concerning
female students or even rapes and murders of women. That case is
unsolved thus far.

In early June, SMS messages were circulated among citizens in which it was
asserted that there have been several cases of robberies, rape and missing
persons. By the middle of June, the story has evolved into the missing
persons had been found with their internal organs removed.

The above message says: "Xinyi city area. During the past month,
more than 21 high school female students have been kidnapped by persons
driving a van. Recently, bodies have been surfacing downstream of the
Jinjiang river."

In recent days, the SMS messages have reached their climax (so far).

The above message was received at 13:38:06 June 22, 2007: "81 students
have gone missing in the education city area of our city!"

SMS messages are necessarily short. The details are filled out by
Internet forum posts. A sample post: "There have been a series of
van kidnappings in Xinyi. Several medium-sized vans have been roaming
the streets of Xinyi. When single females or pairs of females are
spotted, they are quickly dragged into the vans and taken away. None
of these females have returned." Another sample post: "Two
bodies were found in the Jinjiang river of Xinyi. When they were
retrieved, it was found that their hearts had been ripped out ... there is
talk among people that someone is in the business of kidnapping solo
pedestrians and then selling their body organs to people who need
transplants."

These rumors are said to be common knowledge among the people of
Xinyi. Night time business is said to be down (e.g. restaurants,
taxis, etc). Students and their parents are said to be worried and
take extra caution (e.g. boarding students must be accompanied by their
parents if they want to go home). However, the reporter checked all
the institutions (e.g. schools, department of education, public security
bureau, etc) and nobody has any record of these cases of kidnapping and
organ thefts. The telltale sign that these are rumors is that there
are 81 (or even 20 or so) students missing and no one can name a single
person.

Late night on January 29, 2007, Shanxi Datong city Public
Security Bureau Traffic Police Squad southern suburban team assistant
instructor Song Jianzhong killed city Public Security Bureau Political
Department director Li Huimin at home. Afterwards, the streets were
filled with the rumor that Song committed the murder because he paid money
to buy a government position but never got any result. Today, the
rumor has been confirmed: The Shanxi provincial Procuratorate said that an
important reason why Song Jianzhong killed Li Huimin was that Li took
180,000 yuan in bribes from Song but failed to keep the promise to promote
Song (see Southern Metropolis Daily, June 22).

Spending money to buy government positions is nothing
new. Having a dispute over the failure to get a position after payment
is nothing new either. But the loss of a life might be new. Even
so, I 'm really not particularly interested in that. But I think that
if Song Jianzhong spent 180,000 yuan for a minor position and still failed,
then would you think that nobody else has bought their government
positions? No way. Now that Li Huimin has been killed for
selling government positions, then do you think that nobody else will do
that? No way.

But I am still very interested in this story. The
reason for my interest is that this story tells me: "After the murder,
the streets were filled the rumor that Song committed the murder because he
paid money to buy a government position but never got any result.
Today, the rumor has been confirmed." But if we look at the
initial reports about this case, you should learn that there are actually
other rumors associated with this case.

For example, on January 31, <Chongqing Evening News>
cited the description in Xinhua and <Democracy and Legal System
Times>: A Datong public security bureau militia police officer told this
reporter: "The Political Department inside the Public Security Bureau
is a crucial department in charge of the promotions/demotions, hiring and
transfers of the militia police. Ever since Li Huimin became director,
personnel decisions were based 'solely upon money.' People who should
be demoted are not demoted; people who should be promoted are not
promoted. There were strong feelings among the militia police.
The large number of vicious crimes in Datong is largely related to the
mismanagement of police personnel."

So I have to think: If the first rumor has been confirmed,
then is this other rumor also true? Shouldn't the relevant department
investigate whether other people in the Datong Public Security Bureau also
bought their positions from Li Huimin? Of course, it would be even
better if they can investigate just how Li Huimin dared to sell positions!

... On April 27, Henan youth Zhu Guanghui was rescued from
an illegal brick kiln in Yongji city. On his way home, he was pulled
off a bus by an inspector at the Yongji city Department of Labor Supervision
and then presented to work at a different illegal brick kiln. The
inspector even charged Zhu Guanghui 300 yuan as commission. At the end
of May, Zhu Guanghui went with the Henan TV Metro Channel reporter to
confront this inspector at the Yongji city Department of Labor
Supervision. The camera recorded this very embarrassed inspector named
Feng attempting to return the 300 yuan to the boy.

On that afternoon, Zhu Guanghui went out to photocopy
materials for other Henan parents looking for their children but he never
came back. His own father arrived in Yongji later that day, but never
got to see his own son.

After this news was published, the fate of Zhu Guanghui
drew a great deal of public attention. Where was he? It was very
worrisome. On the evening of June 18, Zhu Guanghui finally made it
back to his home in Pingdingshan (Henan). He was interviewed by the
Southern Weekend reporter via telephone.

According to Zhu Guanghui, he went to get photocopies that
afternoon. On the way, he encountered the inspector named Feng
again. Feng was driving a car. He offered Zhu more money in
compensation and tricked him to get omyp the car. Then he drove the
car directly to another brick kiln in Yuncheng city. Zhu Guangji
recalled that a local street sign had said "Yanhu district."

One week later, during the large-scale clean-up of illegal
brick kilns across all of Shanxi province, Zhu Guanghui was liberated for
one more time. He was taken by the Yuncheng public security bureau
officers to the Criminal Investigation Squad in Yongji city. There,
Zhu Guanghui saw inspector Feng (a man with glasses and way hair) in
handcuffs. "He warned me not to talk to reporters," said Zhu
Guanghui.

As of now, the Shanxi police have done an outstanding shop
in cleaning up the illegal brick kilns and saving trapped migrant workers.
Several hundred migrants workers have been freed and Zhu Guanghui was one of
them. He has received a total of 1,500 yuan in compensation from the
central government and the local Department of Labor Supervision.

But Zhu Guanghui could not hide his hatred for that
inspector. "Why did he sell me away twice?" Zhu
Guanghui said that this inspector has been reclaimed by the Department of
Labor Supervision. He said that he did not resist during the process
"because he did not dare resist."

On the evening of June 19, the Southern Weekend reporter
called Yongji city Department of Labor Supervision party secretary
Zhang. He categorically denied that Zhu Guanghui had been sold and
that there was no inspector by the name of Feng. When the reporter
told him that there was a television video, he said: "But that was only
in profile (and not from the front)." He emphasized that Zhu
Guanghui is already 16 years old "and therefore not a child
laborer." Then he promptly hung up the telephone and cut off any
follow-up questions from the reporter.

On June 11, Mr. Qiao of Hunan called the China Telecom
helpline about his problem with Internet access on his newly re-installed
computer. He was informed that he had to proceed to Vnet.cn to
download the latest software.

Mr. Qiao went to Vnet.cn and saw that there was a link to
"Adult Movie Studio" from the log-in page. When he clicked
on the link, he was taken to a page with large quantities of obscene,
indecent, violent and pirated movies (which can be accessed for 30 yuan).

China Telecom is supposedly to be developing a "Green
Movement" to promote the rejection of harmful contents such as
pornography and violence. Mr. Qiao's public complaint points out that
China Telecom is a hypocrite. In addition, if the Ministry of Public
Security is going after pornographic websites, then what about the biggest
one of them all?

According to a person with the Hunan office of China
Telecom, "Vnet.cn is a service content provider, whereas China Telecom
is a platform. The content provider places the service contents onto
the platform. China Telecom only takes care of the technical
implementation. The contents are reviewed by the relevant government
departments and China Telecom only provides assistance."

Is China Telecom's argument acceptable? If you think
that it is, then why can't all the Chinese BBS forums, news portals and blog
service providers invoke the same argument: "We are just platforms and
the contents should be reviewed by the relevant government departments
instead." Why do their administrators have to act as censors?
Furthermore, China Telecom obviously derives revenue as the platform -- the
more popular these adult movie pages are, the more bandwidth consumption and
the more income to China Telecom. Therefore, it is an interested
platform that derives significant profits.

After the Shanxi "Kiln Slaves" affair, we gained
a deeper understanding of the evil in men's hearts and the plight of the
struggling masses. After seeing mining disasters, forced relocations,
government officials insulting public opinion, clashes between urban poor
people and city administrators, etc, I keep thinking that we have to bounce
back up because we have reached the bottom. In the eighteen levels of
hell, haven't we taken the down escalator to reach the basement?
Solzenitzen said, "The depth of sufferings is the height of human
glory." But I do not believe that. When seeds are buried
too deep into the ground, they will die. Humans too.

Yet, the aftermath of the "Kiln Slaves" affair
led to two more developments that truly astounded people. So far, you
have only seen the beginning. According to the recollections and
descriptions of some people, the "coerced labor" in the Shanxi
brick kilns have traversed more than a decade in time and covered the entire
province in scope. Even more disheartening was that we saw the usually
crisis public relations management after the affair was exposed. This
turned the matter of the "concentration camp" of "kiln
slaves" into a straightforward matter of "illegal employment"
which can be solved by paying the back wages. All the cruel butcheries
(such as knocking someone unconscious and throwing him in the grinder to
make minced meat (as reported on June 18, in Zhaoyan Metro News)) was turned
into urban legend with a light repartee: "Show me the proof!"

Now that is even more frightening. When "kiln
slavery" becomes only "illegal employment," then what can
possibly break the law? Has our nation become a zero-crime
nation? It is very hard to accept that utopia has arrived so
quickly. Fortunately, this idiocy was corrected. In the June
20th Xinhua report, Premier Wen Jiabao held a regular State Council at which
the Shanxi provincial officials made self-examinations: "At the
meeting, it was pointed out that the Shanxi 'illegal brick kilns' involved
not only serious illegal employment, but there are also serious criminal
activities such as underground kidnapping gangs, illegal imprisonment,
coerced labor, child labor, intentionally inflicting body injuries and
murder. This incident must be thoroughly investigated and severely
dealt with; the illegal activities and criminal organizations must be
stopped; all the victims must be rescued; the criminals must be punished;
the legal rights of the people (especially minors and mentally handicapped
persons) must be protected; social justice must be upheld." This
position should be more convincing.

If the state still only wants to call this "illegal
employment," then our entire society may collapse because that
definition is simply too far removed from humanity -- it creates the
impression that there is nothing one won't do in order to protect the
interests of the criminals. When the Internet exposed the "kiln
slaves" affair to the world, those government officials who don't like
public opinion monitoring as well as those who have interests involved in
the case obviously tried to cover up. They even said that these were
"lies intended to mislead the people" and that it was too severe
to even consider the case to be "illegal employment."
Actually, wasn't a cadre who sold a slave back to another brick kiln
"retained in office"? It is not easy to train a cadre ...

Existing social problems are often uncovered by common
people. Such problems are not likely to be covered up totally.
In a good society under the rule of law, the common people discover problems
and the problems are solved; if the problems are not solved, the officials
will be solved -- the people will vote them out. But when the common
people discover problems and the officials let the problems persist, then
this is not a normal society. From the recent Xiamen chemical plant to
the Shanxi "kiln slaves," some ordinary citizens spoke out and
then everybody realized the seriousness of the problems. At the same
time, this showed how bad things had been under the lower-level government
officials. In this standoff, it would be a good opportunity to build a
"good society" if the senior decision-makers lean towards the side
of the people.

[072] Updates
on the Shanxi Brick Kiln (06/23/2007) (Asia Weekly via ChineseNewsNet)
The subject here is about commanding and controlling the language of the
communication message.

The change in the language was first noted in the
four-page coverage of the case in Shanxi Evening News. The main
article carried the headline: "Our migrant worker brothers have warm,
welcoming homes everywhere." This article said that in Shanxi,
the migrant workers earn more than 10,000 yuan per year with full
occuational safety and health conditions plus legal aid mechanisms.
The sub-heading at the top of this article was "Strike at illegal
employment; liberate the deceived migrant workers." ... But from June
17, the mainland Chinese media coverage of the illegal brick kilns in Shanxi
abandoned the mention of "illegal slave workers," "kidnapped
and sold," "indentured workers," "sold and traded"
and other language. Instead, they began using "illegal
employment," "migrants who don't want to work anymore,"
"coerced labor," etc.

On June 17, Shanxi provincial governor Yu Youjun held a
special leadership meeting on "Strike at illegal employment; liberate
the deceived migrant workers" in order to make plants to clean up the
illegal employment and liverate the decieved migrant workers. The
final part of Yu Youjun's speech emphasized: "We have to grasp the
direction of public opinion and make timely clarifications to society about
inaccurate or even exaggerated reports so that we can maintain social
stability." The last reference is obviously to the Internet
forums/blogs in China and the oversesa media.

But why would the overseas media change their language of
communication?

The State Administration of Radio, Film and
Television (SARFT) has invoked article 29 of the <Temporary Regulations
for Television Advertisement on Broadcast Television>. The action
taken was that Ningxia TV's General Channel and Kansu TV's General Channel
are ordered to cease the broadcast of all television commercials as of 00:00
on June 18. Broadcast will resume only if the Ningxia and Kansu SARFT
offices are satisfied that administrative problems have been solved.

What are these two television channels guilty of? On
February 2, both channels were cautioned by SARFT that their health/medical
programs were in fact commercial programs that violate the ban on the
advertising of pharmaceutical products or medical services on
television. However, both channels were unrepetant and continued to
broadcast those programs. On April 28 and May 17, SARFT issued a second
warning. When SARFT checked on the two channels between end of May and
June 11, it was found that the two channels were still inserting commercials
and using 'bugs' at the corner of the screen, and so on.

For example, Ningxi TV's General Channel was selling the
"Orange Devil" weight-reduction products in its home shopping
programs. The above information came from an official press
release. Meanwhile, netizens are snickering about the proper
interpretation of a certain social phenomenon. Usually, it is taken that
one would not advertise to sell a product unless there is consumer demand; if
the demand is not there after advertising for some time, then it would be to
withdraw the product and try something else. Given the large number of
tva dvertisements of medicines to treat sexually transmitted diseases, what is
one to think of the state of public helath in China?

... last year in Taiwan, prosecutor Eric Chen charged
Taiwan area leader Chen Shui-bian's wife Wu Shu-chen with embezzlement of
"state secret fees." On June 16, the Kaohsiung district
court annulled the election of Democratic Progressive Party's Chen Chu as
mayor last year. The reason was: On the eve of election, Chen Chu's
campaign team convened a press conference to say that KMT candidate Huang
Chu-ying had been "caught buying votes!" The vote buying
charge was baseless, but Huang had no way to respond in time. On the
next day, Huang lost the election by 1,000 plus votes. This was deemed
to be an illegal tactic that created an unfair election.

This series of judicial decisions showed us something:
apart from black gold politics, corruption and a chaotic democracy, there
exists another Taiwan.

In terms of the development of democracy in Taiwan, these
recent judicial decisions have served the purpose of correcting certain ugly
phenomena during elections. In a previous Kaohsiung mayoral election,
DPP candidate Frank Hsieh won by 4,000 plus votes with the key being a
last-minute audio tape. Although the court ruled later that the tape
was fabricated, Hsieh had won the election and served his term. In the
2004 presidential election, Chen Shui-bian won by fewer than 30,000 votes on
account of the two bullets on March 19.

The common points about these election gimmicks are: at
the most critical moment before the votes were cast, sudden explosive
incidents were set off that the opponents were unable to react to in
time. That was how Chen Chu won. The decision by the Kaohsiung
District Court has objectively struck back at these kinds of improper
behaviors during elections.

It is noteworthy that these judgments were made
independently. The courts were not intimidated by the ruling DPP; they
only looked for convincing evidence and they even charged the Taiwan area
leader Chen Shui-bian's wife.

... The Taiwan media comment that every time that the
court renders a major decision, someone is happy and someone else is
angry. There are completely opposite opinions such as "the
darkest day in the judicial history of Taiwan" versus "the
judiciary defended the democratic values of Taiwan." When the
judiciary fails to please either side all of the time, then it shows that it
is relatively independent.

The history of the development of democratic systems
around the world showed that in a nation or area in which many races or
ethnic groups oppose each other, the development of democracy is often
unstable and imperfect. Such is the condition in Taiwan right
now. Former DPP Mainland Affairs Department head Chen Chung-hsin
said: "Please remember that our basic supporters are only 1/3 of the
Taiwan people while the KMT had the advantage of being the rulers for a long
time and they have powerful resources." In these circumstances,
the independence of the judiciary is especially important and
valuable. A KMT party member said: I can't say
whether the Taiwan judiciary has been corrupted by politics, but there is
definitely a group of judiciary people who work independently with
professional attitude and knowledge ...

Therefore, while we recognize that there is instability
and chaos in Taiwan democracy, we should also recognize that there exists
another Taiwan -- this is the Taiwan in which the citizens are working hard
to achieve the rule of law.

[069] YouTube,
<Heart of Greed> and <Super Avenue of Stars>
(06/22/2007) This is based upon an article by Hong Kong blogger
Sidekick that first appeared in e-zone magazine (June 14, issue 461) and
subsequently posted at the Just A
Sidekick blog.

The Hong Kong TVB drama series <Heart of Greed>
drews a 48 rating in its final episode. <Heart of Greed> is the
first TVB drama series to set up blogs for its characters (see Heart
of Greed blog). Apart from being keeping up with the fashion
of blogging, TVB was probably hoping to capitalize on the Internet effect
and draw greater interest from the netizens.

There is probably an Internet effect, but I am sorry to
say that I did not visit the blogs for the characters in the drama
series. Instead, I have been reading the reports and recommendations
from other citizen bloggers and I watched many of the video highlights
posted by netizens onto YouTube. That was how I got interested and
became drawn back to the television set instead of the computer monitor in
order to catch the final episode.

But many of those YouTube video highlights have now
disappeared, possibly because of complaints about violation of intellectual
property rights.

If
so, then it would seem that TVB still does not get Internet marketing.

Here is a different example. Recently, the top
entertainment news story in the newspapers and on the Internet in Taiwan is
about CTV's <Super Avenue of Stars>. This is a singing
competition that went on for several months. From the very start, the
production unit cooperated with the big Taiwan website wretch.cc. The
official show website, the BBS's, web forums and blogs from the contestants
and their fans provided blanket coverage on the show. The netizens
posted more than 8,000 videoclips at YouTube and you can spend as much as
time watching them as you care to.

Why didn't CTV complain to YouTube about the violation of
their intellectual property rights?

Among the Taiwan bloggers that I am familiar with, many of
them only began to be interested in this program in late April. Just
like me, they went to the Internet to watch what they had missed and then
they got interested to watch the future episodes faithfully, plus endorsing
the program on their blogs. A sincere endorsement by a blogger is the
most powerful communication message at this time. This program is so
hot that its popularity has spilled over to Hong Kong and mainland China.

There are still several episodes of <Super Avenue of
Stars> to go before the final contest on July 6. The rapid increase
in viewership due to the Internet effect is no doubt giving CTV higher
ratings and more advertising revenue. Would you say that those YouTube
videoclips, which violated the intellectual property rights of CTV, are
helping or hurting CTV?

[068] The
Hong Kong District Council By-Elections (06/21/2007) (Derek
Greyhound) With respect to the by-elections in the Hong Kong
District Coun il, the pan-democratic camp has lost 8 of 9
by-elections. What is the excuse? Government-business
collusion? Chinese Communist suppression? If these reasons
actually work, then it is time to give up altogther because the other side
is infinitely more resourceful!

Alternately, there is this explanation cited in Comment #50 at this Derek
Greyhound post about the Kong Lok Yuen by-election:

... Getting back to Kong Lok Yuen, I saw that our
opposition had all their people out. Their manpower and resources were
several times that of ours. Their candidate was a member of the rural
constituency and he had the full support of the DAB party ... on election
day, the opposition was out there walking the streets, propagandizing and
lobbying for votes. They did so much more than the democrats were
willing and able to do. The low turnout also showed that the voters
were not committed. I stood there from 3pm to 10pm. My back and
legs hurt, but what hurts more was that the candidate supported by the
democrats lost by a big margin.

The implications on this day are huge. We have the
desire to fight for democracy, but we still have to wait before people
actually put out the effort. We try to gain the support of the people
by trying to reform the system, but the conservatives look towards getting
results instead. They are good at organizing, especially with respect
to organizing for elections. Even if we have democracy today, the
democrats cannot win. More importantly, the pursuit for democracy is
spontaneous and requires commitment; if you want democracy but refuse to
commit any effort, then it is futile.

Who is this person saying these discouraging words?
The speaker is Ronny Tong of the Hong Kong Civic Party and these words were
published in an opinion column for Ming Pao. The comments at the Derek
Greyhound blog are that these ideas are insubstantive and non-actionable given
that the full round of District Council elections will take place in November
2007 -- the pan-democratic camp cannot suddenly discover the importance of
local work five months before the elections! And it is not about
realizing the importance of something -- it is about what (if anything) can be
done about it!

QUESTION:
Sean, President Chen Shui-bian of Taiwan has spoken of plans to conduct a
referendum on whether or not Taiwan should join the UN under the name of
Taiwan.

MR.
MCCORMACK:
Right.

QUESTION:
An official in this building gave some background comments yesterday and I'm
wondering whether or not you have anything on the record for us.

MR.
MCCORMACK:
Sure, I have something for you. We support Taiwan's inclusion, as
appropriate, in international organizations that do not require statehood
for membership. Consistent with our one China policy, we do not support
Taiwan's membership in international organizations that require statehood,
including the United Nations.

The United
States opposes any initiative that appears designed to change Taiwan's
status unilaterally. This would include a referendum on whether to apply to
the United Nations under the name Taiwan. While such a referendum would have
no practical impact on Taiwan's UN status, it would increase tensions in the
Taiwan Strait. Maintenance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait
is of vital interest to the people of Taiwan and serves U.S. security
interests as well. Moreover, such a move would appear to run counter to
President Chen's repeated commitments to President Bush and the
international community. We urge President Chen to exercise leadership by
rejecting such a proposed referendum.

QUESTION:
Could I follow up? A quick follow-up.

MR.
MCCORMACK:
Sure.

QUESTION:
Sean, Taiwan is a democracy and 80 percent of the people in Taiwan support
Taiwan's membership in the UN. And President Chen is obviously reacting to
public demand. What is wrong with that?

MR.
MCCORMACK:
I can read this to you again -- (laughter) -- if you want me to. But I would
refer to you what I -- the answer I just gave you.

QUESTION:
Can I -- can I follow up? There are some in Taiwan and elsewhere that say
that there are some UN agencies that it would behoove Taiwan to be a part of
because it involves cooperation in the international system and you need
Taiwan's help, such as with avian flu or SAARS or other economic types of
things where the fact that Taiwan is not a member kind of hurts
international cooperation as a whole.

MR.
MCCORMACK:
I'm going to refer you to paragraph one of what I read. I'll repeat it. We
support Taiwan's inclusion, as appropriate, in international organizations
that do not require statehood for membership. Consistent with our one China
policy, we do not support Taiwan's membership in international organizations
that require statehood, including the United Nations.

QUESTION:
Well, I mean, so are you willing to forsake issues of international
stability to make a point that Taiwan is not a state? I mean, what about
instances where statehood is required for membership but cooperation from
Taiwan would be vital?

MR.
MCCORMACK:
I can read it to you again, if you like.

QUESTION:
No, that won't be necessary. Thank you.

QUESTION:
Excuse me. Other then WHO, which I think is the example that most people are
familiar with, what other organizations are there -- UN agencies?

Taiwan is to push ahead with plans for a referendum on
joining the United Nations under its own name despite U.S. and Chinese
objections, a ruling party official said on Wednesday. The official
for President Chen Shui-bian's Democratic Progressive Party (DPP)
confirmed the referendum drive would continue, but declined further
comment because she was not authorized to talk to the media. But she
referred to a report in the Wednesday edition of the pro-DPP Liberty
Times, in which party secretary general Lin Chia-lung was quoted as saying
that "regardless of whether or not the United States opposes, we will
push forward with this referendum agenda."

Indeed, how can Taiwan claim to be a sovereign nation
unless it can make its own autonomous decisions? How can there be
sovereignty if Taiwan has to accede to American demand every time?
Even the Taiwan opposition through the comments of KMT presidential
candidate Ma Ying-jeou says that anything good for Taiwan is a good
thing. But once Chen Shui-bian starts down this path, what excuse can
there be for backing off? There better not be any reversal of course!

[066] Hong
Kong By The Numbers (06/20/2007) (HKU
POP) (1,016 persons were interviewed June 8-12 about their
appraisal of local news media.

This stuff never ceases to amaze. Most people depend on television and
newspapers. When it comes to trustworthiness, television kills
newspapers because of the obvious biases in the latter (and this is a
consistent theme covered on this website as shown by the different newspaper
front page headlines on the same event). And when it comes to
satisfaction, the magazines were totally clobbered because of their
fictional news reports. But this begs the question: Why do the
newspapers and magazines continue to sell at news stands? Maybe they
think that they are selling news but the people are buying entertainment?

At CCTV, the famous program <The Same Song> was
planning a public service episode entitled <The Mothers of
Heroes>. Here, the heroes included firemen who lost their lives in
the line of duty. Already, big shots such as Zhang Yimou, Chen Kaige,
Jackie Chen and others have accepted invitations. But when the program
invited Andy Lau, he declined through his agent on the grounds that he was
still working very hard on the movie <Romance of the Three
Kingdoms>. The director of <The Same Song> is Meng Xin.
She is an Andy Lau fan. She was so disappointed by the refusal of Andy
Lau that she cried. The program planner said: "Andy Lau, what is
so big deal about you! How dare you say no to the mothers of the
heroes? ... A star like this does not deserve to appear on CCTV.
There is no need for us to provide him with any opportunity to make
money. Everybody knows that this program wins fame and fortune for the
stars."

The above episode was told to and reported by the
entertainment blogger Yang Jingsong on his blog. The next day,
<Modern Express News> reported this story in a small space. But
the news editors at NetEase and other news portals recognized the
implications of this news story and placed it in prominent locations.
This created an instant Internet sensation. At NetEase alone, it drew
more than 6,000 comments by 10:30pm last night.

Surprisingly, the comments were also one-sidedly for Andy
Lau and against <The Same Song>. Some of them were bitterly
sarcastic:

- Our neighborhood is planning a Love/Concern Evening Gala and we invited
CCTV's <The Same Song> to participate. But they turned us
down! We invited Meng Xin to write something for us, but she said that
she was busy and could not find the time! I'm very angry. My
director was so angry that he cried. Our neighbood committee will
never invite CCTV to come again!

- If Andy Lau's agent handled this matter incorrectly, then what about the
workers at CCTV's <The Same Song>? Why did they bring this
affair to the open?

- When <The Same Song> gathered the mothers with missing children to
sing to them and rub salt in their wounds, they call this public
service. Is Andy Lau allowed to disagree with the judgment?
Maybe he detests such a gala and wants nothing to do you with?

- I didn't like Andy Lau before, but I am beginning to like him now.

- Refusing your request is not immoral. But invoking morality to apply
pressure on people is immoral.

- If Andy Lau won't come, you criticize him. What if Andy Lau
criticizes you directly? Are you going to give him a physical beating?

- You are picking on the wrong target. <The Same Song> is a
commercial tv program that had been exposed as doing shady deals. To
use the name of public service to criticize Andy Lau, who is famous for
being interested in public service, is just looking for trouble for
yourself.

- CCTV is behaving just like the family of Yang Lijuan (see You
Won't Understand My Sorrow). "If you don't
accede to my demands, I will pour a bucket of feces on you."

[064] Students
Scammed Taiwan Media (06/20/2007) (Apple
Daily) In Taiwan, three university students from Hong Kong/Macau
found the news reporting on certain television channels to be unacceptable
in many ways. "If you grasp the media tastes, it is easy to
manipulate the media because they never verify anything." To
demonstrate this assertion, they created two fake news items and forwarded
them as tips to seven cable television news channels. Eventually, four
of them broadcast those stories.

In the first story entitled "The Ghost of the Dog," a female
university students pretended to be troubled by the appearance of the ghost of her
beloved dog (e.g. she found dog hair by her bed when she woke up) and asked
for help on the Internet. An anonymous netizen then faxed the plea for
help to the media. This story was broadcast on August 18 by Era TV.

In the second story entitled "Internet auctions of luck," a female
university student was able to buy a bottle of "luck." Prior
to that, she had a quarrel with her best friend, she lost her winning
lottery ticket, she misplaced her mobile telephone, and had general bad
luck. After spending NT$1,380 to buy a bottle of "luck,"
things improved. The best friend came back, apologized and made
up. She found her misplaced mobile telephone and so on. On
August 25, ETTV, CTTV and SETV broadcast this story.

Based upon the current AGB Nielsen Media television ratings, these two
stories were seen by 360,000 viewers.

In their own documentary (

腳尾米完整版
at Google Video), the students commented that the television channels did not
question the story and did not attempt to verify. In "The Ghost of
the Dog," the television reporter did not question the female student's assertions and even
hoped that she could shed a few tears for "television."

The National Communications Commission is looking into these cases and may warn/punish the television channels for negligence.

[063] Ai
Dongmei and Milk (06/19/2007) In the comment below, former
Chinese marathon star Ai Dongmei talked about her reluctance to speak to the
foreign media for the purpose of seeking personal justice. That is her
prerogative and I don't want to dispute her right. All I can do it is
to inform you about her position.

Meanwhile, with respect to The
Milk Weekly Plagiarism Case, there has been a great deal of
discussion. This is a blatant case of plagiarism of a blog post by a
mainstream magazine writer. The editor offered a defense of
coincidence. But the original blog post contained three grammatical
mistakes which were reproduced exactly in the published article. This
could not possibly have happened as a matter of coincidence alone. So
what are the options for the blogger? Here are some suggestions:

- Write to the publisher, who is most likely to going to protect his/her
staff.
- Write to the Hong Kong Customs Department, which requires a personal
appearance to present the case of copyright infringement.
- File a civil lawsuit, which incurs legal expenses and personal time.

All these options require time and money. So there is a general sense
of despondency. Which one of us have that kind of time and/or money to
waste?

I suggest otherwise. As in the case of Ai Dongmei, you can just use the
power of the Internet. When Ai Dongmei posted at Sina.com, she never
imagined that it would lead to anything. But things happened and it
became a major mainstream media story. Even if she did not intend it,
her case was an international case. In the case of the Milk Weekly
plagiarism case, the blogger made a complaint on the blog. The issue
was whether other bloggers would make of it. This case was so
clear-cut that anyone who came across it simply has to be outraged.
When enough bloggers mention it, it becomes mainstream media material.
It may or may not happen in this case yet. But sooner or later, if not
in this case then in some other case, the (Chinese-language) Hong Kong
blogosphere will learn that they have the power to gather enough public
opinion to achieve social justice.

What is my personal role? I write in English and I am not part of the
Chinese-language blogosphere in Hong Kong. However, I am the person
who implements the Chinese saying: Good things do not get outside of the
home; bad things travel a thousand miles away. I am the person who
transmits the bad news a thousand miles away. If the Milk magazine
plagiarism case is about bringing pressure, then my translation has brought
the brand name of Milk magazine to international attention in a dishonorable
manner. Unlike Ai Dongmei, I have every intention to bring such cases
to international attention.

[062] Ai
Dongmei Gets Justice (06/19/2007) In The
Medals of Marathoner Ai Dongmei, the story was that former
Beijing marathon winner Ai Dongmei had to set up a street stall to sell her
athletic medals because her marathon winnings had been expropriated by her
coach. Ai Dongmei published her story on a Sina.com blog and drew a
great deal of public attention. Since then, Ai Dongmei and two other
teammates have taken their coach to court in a civil lawsuit. The case
has been settled out of court in which Ai Dongmei received the full amount
of back pay/winnings from her coach. The total amount was more than
200,000 yuan!

But here is the part that I wish to focus on (New Express via 6Park).
Ai Dongmei said:

When this lawsuit was first reported by the media, many foreign media contacted me. They wanted to
interview me. These included Associated Press, Reuters, BBC and so
on. I have their business cards. I met with them but I did not
give any interviews to them. Many Japanese media contacted me.
One of them even came in an embassy car directly to our house and said that
they will sponsor me if only I would grant them an interview. I could
have made more money than from winning the lawsuit and I would never need to
worry about my livelihood for the rest of my life. In the end, I
turned them all down. It got so bad that I had to move my home
elsewhere. The main reason was that I felt that I had won glory for my
nation in athletics. What happened afterwards was beyond my
control. It is one thing if this affair was exposed only in the
Chinese media. I don't want to expose our shortcomings to foreign
media ...

It is her position that she does not want to turn this into
an international scandal that would damage the good name of her country. But my role as a
bridge blogger means that I do the exact opposite. I am here to
publicize the cases of wronged individuals such as Ai Dongmei and to bring
international pressure so that justice can be rendered.

[061] The
Latest Gini Coefficient For Hong Kong (06/19/2007) (The
Standard) Gap wider between rich and poor. By Damon Pang
and Mimi Lau. June 19, 2007.

The wealth gap between
the rich and poor has widened further with the overall Gini coefficient,
representing income disparity, at its highest since the figures were
recorded. ... The
Gini coefficient is commonly used to indicate income inequality in a
society. It is a number which has a value between zero and one. As the value
of the coefficient rises, the higher the degree of income inequality in a
society becomes. Last year the figure stood at a record high of 0.533,
compared with 0.518 in 1996.

... Dividing the population into 10
equal-weighted decile groups, the census department found the median
household income for the richest 10 percent of Hong Kongers was HK$78,000
last year, compared with HK$2,400, or 32.5 times more, for the poorest 10
percent. By percentages, the richest group of households, or top 10
percent income earning families, represent 41.4 percent of money made by the
entire population last year, compared with 0.8 percent earned by the bottom
10 percent. That indicates the richest group of people earns 51.75 times
more than the poorest. For individual workers, the median monthly
income for the two lowest groups, or the poorest 20 percent of Hong Kongers,
fell by 12.5 percent to HK$3,500. The median wage for the richest
two-tenths of locals, meanwhile, rose 20 percent to HK$30,000 per month.

... In
terms of household income, 205,515 households, or 9.2 percent of the total
number of families, earned less than HK$4,000 a month last year, up from
123,869 households, or 6.7 percent, in 1996. At the other end of the
spectrum, 378,473 families had more than HK$40,000 of income last year,
representing 17 percent of all local households, up from 278,703, or 15
percent, in 1996.

The Census and Statistics
Department has published its research data on household income
yesterday. They said that the Gini coefficient has risen while the
distribution of income has shown a bigger gap betweem the rich and the poor. Someone said, "It is
time to sound the warning bell." The purpose of the warning bell
is not to tell people that the income gap has grown, but to warn people that
certain groups of people will no doubt take advantage of the Gini
coefficient data to get media exposure while actually damaging the real
interests of the truly needy people.

To make this clear, the Gini
coefficient is a statistical quantity that is used to measure the income
differences. The bigger the Gini coefficient, the bigger the gap among
people. But a small Gini coefficient is not necessarily a good
thing. The North Koreans are all poor and the Gini coefficient there
is almost a perfect zero. But those people who are making a big deal
about the rise of the Gini coefficient in Hong Kong are not likely to apply
to immigrate to North Korea any time soon.

By consensus, people are most concerned
most of all about the standard of living for low-income people in Hong Kong. The Gini
coefficient only reflects the income gap between the poor and rich
people. Those who are trying to use the Gini coefficient may not
understand that point; when they see other people talk Gini coefficient,
they do so too. Alternately, they hate rich people and despise poor
people and therefore they are using the poor people to express their own
hatred of the rich people. But no matter what their motivations are,
you cannot alleviate poverty until you get to the essence of the issue,
which is alleviating poverty.

There are certain groups or
legislators who embrace the Gini coefficient and want to have a progressive
tax system that will transfer income from the rich to the poor. When the rich
people's income is handed over to the poor people, the incomes will be closer to
each other and the Gini coefficient will go down. But is handing money
directly over to the poor the real way of helping the poor? Maybe, or
maybe not. There are always risks in starting a business venture. If your return is heavily taxed,
you won't bother taking those risks. When nobody bothers to start
companies and create
wealth, there is nothing to tax and the poor will not be helped as a result.

To really alleviate poverty, the
key is through education to improve the productivity of poor people so that
they can earn more money. When the poor have more money, they consume
and businesses earn more money. It may be that the Gini coefficient
keeps rising as a result, but the overall quality of life of the entire society will be
improving. The Gini coefficient is not the point.

... When a legislator
wants to address the alleviation of poverty and only talks about the
Gini coefficient, then he does not really want to help the poor people improve
themselves and their lives. Either he is stupid or else he is just a
politician using the poor people to score political points.

It is eleven days until July 1st. Since president Hu
Jintao will be bringing a group of senior officials to visit Hong Kong at
the end of June as well as participate in the series of celebrations of the
tenth anniversary of the return of Hong Kong to China, there have been many
mainland Chinese government officials and thinktank members visiting Hong
Kong in order to gather information. Many media persons have been
contacted by these "investigators." These visitors have a
common feature in that they have been asking detailed questions about big
and small issues in Hong Kong, especially what the social activitists are up
to.

... There also appears to be two big points about this
group of "special information gatherers." First, they appear
to come from many different organizations. Some of the units that have
previously not shown much interest in Hong Kong are sending people
down. Their official titles may be a member of a certain research
organization, or an official in the security ministry.

Secondly, the mainland "special information
gatherers" seemed to have more detailed concerns, from the affair of
DAB chairman Ma Li's comments about the "June 4th massacre," to
some of the hot social topics such as the erotic section in the Chinese
University Student Press, the controversy over Queens Pier, etc. They
wanted to know the details about all those issues. Furthermore, they
want to know what some of the social activists (especially those in the
pan-democratic camp) are working on and demanding. One of them even
asked about whether former Secretary of Security Regina Ip would actually
march in the streets on July 1st because the word Technology was removed
from the newly reorganized Commerce and Industry Bureau. The
"information gatherers" also wanted to know whether the media
workers agree with the police restricts on demonstrations and whether Ma Lik
should return before July 1st.

... These actions make people think that even though
Donald Tsang's team is highly popular among the people, certain mainland
departments are still not reassured about the total situation in Hong Kong
and they are worried about things going wrong when the leaders come to Hong
Kong. The 500,000 persons in the streets in 2003 must have shocked
many mainland departments and the shadow remains with them even now.

[059] The
Tangshan Armored Vehicle (06/19/2007) (Southern
Metropolis Daily) In Tangshan city, a man named Yang Xuekuan
has been charged with extorting 800 million yuan from a number of
people. This case has not been publicized in local Tangshan media
because of the 'negative' implications -- Yang Xuekuan was a member of the
Tangshan city Chinese Communist Party Consultative Conference. How did
Yang manage to extort that much money?

When arrested, Yang and his crew were found to have one armored vehicle,
four military jeeps, 38 guns, 12 tear gas canisters and more than 10,000
bullets. Yes, you read right -- he owns an armored vehicle:

Here are some examples of his crimes:

Last summer, Yang Xuekuan targeted an iron mine and sent his henchmen in to
negotiate. The owner was willing to sell but could not accept the low
price. Yang sent his henchmen to fire their guns at the owner's house
and extracted the signature.
Yang Xuekuan set up a joint venture with a local real estate
developer. When the partner realized that it was a scam, he wanted his
money back. Yang refused and hired a hit man to try to assassinate the
real estate developer. The hit man has turned himself in to the
police.
A Tangshan resident named Li Baoshun offended Yang Xuekuan. So Yang
took nine armed henchmen and stationed themselves outside Li's house for
three days. Li was scared and barricaded himself inside his home. When
the gang realized that Li was at home, they fired four shots at the windows.
One time, two police officers interrupted Yang's activities in the
street. Those two were beaten and seriously injured by Yang's henchmen
and ended up staying in hospital for more than half a month.

What would you do if a group of armed men drove up outside your home in an
armored vehicle? You call the police but they are too scared to
come! What next? In this case, it looks like that you should
take some photographs, post them on the Internet, generate public outrage
and force government action!

[058] Comments
on the Shanxi Brick Kiln Case (06/18/2007) When a case raises
mass public anger, the usual thing happens. On one hand, there is a
notice from from the CPS Central Office of External Communication to the
news websites (via China
Digital Times): "Regarding the Shanxi “illegal brick
kilns” event, all websites should reinforce positive propaganda, put more
emphasis on the forceful measures that the central and local governments
have already taken, and close the comment function in the related news
reports. The management of the interactive communication tools, such as
online forums, blogs, and instant messages, should also be
strengthened."

On the other hand, the local Shanxi media have been ordered to drop all
their own coverage and only use the Xinhua reports. Those orders do
not affect media based outside of Shanxi.

Why do they do this? They are afraid that the public anger may be
directed at "inappropriate" levels of the party/government (e.g.
the party as a whole, the national leaders, the provincial leaders,
etc). But it is interesting just what is coming through anyway under
these restrictions.

... Behind the phenomenon of illegal brick kilns, there is
the problem of certain government departments being derelict in their
duties. The illegal brick kilns are illegal and have not passed any
procedures. So how could they exist for years? Could the
large-scale kidnapping of outsiders to work as slaves, the restriction of
freedom of movement, the reckless beatings of the workers and other serious
criminal acts be totally unnoticed by the relevant local departments?

From past experience, the evil forces rule because they
have a protective umbrella. In the Hongdong county illegal brick kiln
affair, the police only allowed parents to rescue their own children and
they let the kiln owners threaten the parents; a Labor Supervisory
Department employee participated in selling a child laborer to another brick
kiln; someone was passing information along to the illegal brick kiln owners
so that they can destroy the evidence and flee ... these various signs
showed that there is likely to be government-business collusion behind these
illegal brick kilns.

Even as the principal criminals at the illegal brick kilns
are severely dealt with, we must hold accountable and punish severely in
accordance with the state laws and disciplinary rules all those cadre
leaders who refused to see or hear anything occurring within their
jurisdictions and neglected to carry out their duties.

At the least, Xinhua is lighting the fire to various local
departments. Meanwhile, here is the editorial in Southern
Metropolis Daily (which is based in Guangzhou and outside of Shanxi):

The cruel phenomenon of slave labor involves government
departments such as Labor Supervision, Public Cecurity, Population Planning,
Commerce and Industry, Taxation, Labor Union, etc. If just one of
these base-level departments enforced the law or functioned effectively,
they could stopped the long-term prevalence of these brutalities. Yet
none of these departments cleaned up the very common illegal brick kilns in
Shanxi. A local Labor Supervisory Department employee even sold a
rescued child laborer to another brick kiln. The local public security
bureau refused to intervene because they said that the kidnappings did not
occur in their jurisdiction. This evil chain of illegal labor
continued until the parents of missing children and the morally indignant
media joined in an investigation to uncover these "very shocking and
appalling" crimes. The basic active assistance that the
base-level departments are supposed to perform fell instead upon the
shoulders of the parents and the media.

If the local government refuses to change the focus and
continues to pass the buck, the public must ask how these negligent
base-level officials should be dealt with. The Hongdong illegal brick
kilns and all the other illegal factories and kilns in Shanxi became a
humanitarian disaster because the base-level governments failed to protect
the citizens. After the affair was exposed and the higher-ups demanded
an investigation, the various levels of government in Hongdong county passed
the responsibility down until the clean-up delegation was assigned to lowest
level of administration -- Caosheng village, Guangshangsi town, Hongdong
county, Linfen city, Shanxi province (where the illegal brick kiln was
located). The way by which the village handled the matter was even
more astonishing -- the "slaves" who were treated inhumanely for
over a year were given 200 yuan per person and taken to the local bus and
train stations for destinations unknown.

The dereliction of duty of the base-level government,
their slowness in reacting to the criminal activities, their shirking of
public responsibilities and even indirect encroachment on public interests
have reached a point of being intolerable. Previously, there have been
many analyses about these types of mistakes. Usually, the reasons
include confusion from the overlapping functions of various government
departments or local protectionism. But the assumptions of those
analyses are usually that the local governments were trying to serve the
people but their methods were wrong or ineffective. But now it seems
to be a huge question whether the base-level governments were genuinely
interested in working for the rights of the citizens. When the
base-level governments are severed from the public, then all the laws,
rules, regulations and policies are void. The truth is that no one has
been held accountable so far ...

So while the Central Office of External Communication wanted
the news websites to cool down and the Shanxi media are using only Xinhua
reports, Xinhua and the outside mainstream media want the heads of local
government cadre leaders on pikes! This does not sound astounding until
you ask: Could this happen thirty years ago? Could this happen twenty
years ago? Could this happen ten years ago?

President Chen Shui-bian went to Kaohsiung yesterday to
support the court appeal by Chen Chu. He said that when the first
trial annulled the election of Chen Chu, the message was that "the
election of the person with the most votes was annulled while the person
who bought votes had a second chance to be elected." He
believes that the judiciary will render justice for Chen Chu and not make
the people vote again.

President Chen strongly criticized the Kaohsiung
District Court for rashly annulling the election of Chen Chu.
"This joke has gone to too far." This was a joke on the
judiciary, the democratic system, the citizens of Kaohsiung and the
investigation of vote buying.

President Chen said that he cannot believe that people
can accept a candidate from a vote-buying camp to become the mayor.
He will be a future resident of Kaohsiung and he will be the first one to
oppose that. Chen Chu will not have any problems with the appeal,
resignation or going on leave because the party/government central will support her
100%. He is confident that Chen Chu will serve her full time or else
"I won't buy a house in Kaohsiung."

He said that there was a sharp disagreement in the
opinion of the judges, with the first ever appearance of a dissenting
opinion. As a person in the law profession, he has never seen such a
rash court decision. "What kind of world is
this?" The decision said that N$500 was "a small
amount" and that one or two busloads of paid demonstrators did not
constitute vote buying. That was just unacceptable, because it is
encouraging the candidates to buy votes in the "prime period"
after campaigning activities are supposed to stop.

He also questioned when if Chen Chu's press conference
about the vote buying on the eve of the election became the reason to
annul the election, then the specific inaccurate media and public opinion
polls that indicated that the Democratic Progressive Party was going to lose by 15%
to 20% must surely have an impact too?

President Chen said that the suspected vote-buyers in
the case were eventually charged and the prosecutor established that Chen
Chu did not direct that show. The court decision obviously showed
that the court had a position first and then looked for a reason.
This was the greatest insult to the judiciary.

When the election of Kaohsiung mayor Chen Chu was
annulled, were President Chen Shui-bian's comments of doubt about the
judiciary appropriate?

According to the customary practice in democratic
countries, it was inappropriate! There are many similar incidents in
western democratic countries and the principals only said: "This is
regrettable. Our lawyers will file an appeal" and nothing
more. The President or the Prime Minister would say at most: "We
are surprised and we are also very sorry." They would never
challenge the authority of the judiciary, much less use a contemptuous tone
to criticize the judiciary. This is the most basic quality of
democracy and the highest respect for the separation of three powers.
They would never go and describe this as "the darkest day in the
history of the judiciary" as the Democratic Progressive Party and Chen
Chu did; and they would never make inappropriate comments about doubting the
judiciary like President Chen did.

On the day before yesterday, President Chen said:
"I'm very surprised" and that was appropriate. When he
said: "It is incomprehensible to arrive at such a judgment," it
was inappropriate. When he emphasized to "appeal all the
way," that should have been what the principal Chen Chu said. The
president should not have said it, because he was neither the principal nor
the principal's lawyer and it was unbecoming for the president to discuss
the details and technical aspects of the case.

Besides, if Chen Chu and her lawyers should decide to give
up the right to appeal, then the words of the President is actually limiting
the freedom of the principal. If they decide not to appeal anyway,
that would damage the authority of the president.

The most important point is: According to the
Constitution, the president is over and above the five yuans and he has the
duty to maintain the separation and to coordinate the activities among those
powers. He cannot lower himself to be the Premier to challenge the
judiciary. The president is also not a party partisan. He is the
president of the nation, not just the leader of a political party.
After seven years as president, Chen Shui-bian still only has the
consciousness as the leader of the Democratic Progressive Party and he does
not realize that he is the supreme leader of the nation. Sigh!

... Bloggers have many subjects and angles. As
such, they can compliment the inadequacies of the mainstream media.

EastSouthWestNorth's
Roland Soong reads an astonishing number of newspaper article each
day. He selects those that have news value and translates them into
English on his blog so that the English-language reader can read about what
is happening in Hong Kong, mainland China and Taiwan.
EastSouthWestNorth has a certain influence among foreign media. The
foreign newspapers reported on "Bus Uncle" through the translation
on EastSouthWestNorth.

Hong Kong
Media Buster has a stated goal of criticizing Hong Kong media.
In order to make powerful criticisms and reflections, the basic requirement
is knowledge and information. The two-man team at Hong Kong Media
Busters cites information from foreign media and United Nations official
sources. Recently, their hottest topic has been about environmental
protection. People interested in environmental protection may scoff,
but they may become reflective if they take a longer view. Besides,
the writers clearly show that they have made an effort at compiling the
information. The local media mainly rely on several news agencies, so
that this additional information is useful. Interestingly, this blog
draws a large number of critical comments but most of which are not
persuasive.

Diuman
Park is also run by two persons. They are critical but also
informative. Their sarcastic tone offers a different kind of
attraction.

... In the Internet world, the popularity of a blog is
clearly indicated by the traffic volume. Generally speaking, it is
outstanding for a Hong Kong blog post to receive 2,000 to 3,000 page
views. Their popularity cannot match that of mainstream media.
Last year, the mainstream media were trying as hard as they can to report on
Bus Uncle and this was cited as an example of the Web 2.0 effect. But
the Bus Uncle video had been circulated for several weeks on the Internet
before the mainstream media picked it up. Many people (including this
writer) had seen the video and there was not much discussion until the
mainstream media began hyping it up. At the end of April, I was on a
Radio Hong Kong program on which we glossed over Bus Uncle. We never
expected that several weeks later, we would see psycholgists discussing the
social phenomenon of Bus Uncle on television news. It was the
mainstream media that made Bus Uncle popular.

"Every blogger is a reporter." This saying
has been present ever since blogs came around, but it has not been
realized. In Hong Kong, news blogs do not have the fertile grounds in
mainland China where news is broadly controlled by mainstream media.
Famous mainland blogger Isaac Mao shared his views about blogger culture
with us and showed that mainland netizens are using blogs to communicate and
receive information that the traditional media would not provide. The
Chongqing nail house was an example -- when the official media banned
reporting about the case, bloggers went to interview the principals and
their traffic surged. Another classical example of blogger culture is
the One More Kilogram project.

... At this point, we have to ask an old question: What is
a blog? In April 2005, some Hong Kong bloggers started the "blog
is blog" signature campaign because they did not believe that a blog is
just an online diary. Earlier this year, a similar discussion emerged
among the more active bloggers to the point where some people believed that
the standard blog service provider Xanger is not providing true blog
service. This is an undecidable discussion (and it would be scary if a
decision could be reached). Even if the bloggers did not reach a
conclusion, these types of self-relections are the essential steps that
local blogs must make in order to move forward. Personally speaking, I
think that a blog can be anything. But a blog that is like a newspaper
column with substantive contents, rational discussions and popular topics is
likely to be one which will become popular. Most bloggers do not care
and they do whatever they want without caring too much about success or
failure ... But when your readership surges and you have achieved a certain
fame, the responsibility of leadership ensues. As the famous blogger Jackie
said: "One uses one's personal power to influence society and change
the world."

Anyway, blogs provide the opporutnity to participate in
and influence society and change the world. Will that actually
happen? That is another story!

[055] A
Show Of Force In Lan Kwai Fong (06/17/2007) This is a strange
incident because there are so many different versions of the story.
The facts are not in dispute -- about 40 Hong Kong police officers stopped
16 Chinese males on Wellington Street (across the Yung Kee restaurant) just
before Lan Kawi Fong. The men carried neither weapons nor drugs.
The 16 males have been charged with "illegal assembly." But
the newspapers are telling different stories about why these 16 men were
stopped, arrested and charged. Here is the roll call:

(Apple
Daily) The leader of the gang was a Wo Sing Wo leader named
Hing Chai. He is active in Kowloon and runs a mahjong house in the
Yaumatei area. On Friday night, Hing Chai and two other followers went
to Lan Kwai Fong bar in the early hours of the morning. They were
prevented by the Indian/Pakastani gatekeepers from entering because they
were "hick

老土"
and dishevelled. There was an argument and the bar bouncers were
summoned (Note: bar bouncers are usually triad gang members). It was
believed that someone called for reinforcement and more than a dozen gangsters
with dyed hair and body tatoos showed up to wait for the order to proceed to
the bar. But more than 40 police officers from the Organized Crime Unit
appeared, surrounded the men and ordered: "We are the police. Everybody get down!" "We are from the Organized Crime Unit.
Everybody get down in a row!" "I told you to get down.
Don't try anything funny!" The unusual aspect of this case is that
the men came from three different triad gangs (Wo Sing Wo, Sun Yee On and Wo
Hop To).

(The
Sun) On this night, a woman with triad
background went with several friends to drink in Lan Kwai Fong. By
1am, she already had a lot to drink but she still wanted to proceed to an
upscale club. When they arrived there, the workers found out that these
people were not members and so they turned them away. The woman
apparently felt that this was a serious loss of face and used a mobile phone
to call the gangster named Ah King to help. She threatened to raze the
club to the ground. This was noted by the local police detectives who
happened to be there, and they summoned reinforcement from the Organized Crime
Unit. At around 2am, three vehicles arrived and dropped off more than a
dozen men at Wellington Street. As the men marched towards Lan Kwai
Fong, the police appeared, surrounded and ordered them to get down.

(Sing Tao)
With the beginning of summer vacation for students, the police have increased
their sweeps of the large discotheques in Western Kowloon. This meant
that there are fewer places for drug dealers and users to hang out. A
couple of days ago, a dozen Wo Sing Wo triad gang members went to a new
location in a Lan Kwai Fong bar to sniff ketamine and cocaine. The bar
workers refused to let them in. As a result, the men called for
reinforcement for the purpose of causing trouble at the bar. At 2am,
three vehicles arrived outside 17 Wellington Street with more than a dozen
men. At that moment, the police charged out and surrounded the men.

So which story do you like better? Can they all be true?

[054] Hong
Kong Police Shut Down Five Websites (06/16/2007) (Apple
Daily) Yesterday, Hong Kong police raided 22 locations and
arrested 16 persons. Among these 16 persons were 11 men and 1 woman
associated with the websites. The police took away 14 computers and 9
servers as evidence. Most of the websites are believed to be operated
by the 14K triad gang.

The websites were shut down because they were advertising for the
single-apartment prostitutes. Hong Kong sticks to the rule of
law. It is illegal to run a multi-person brothel, but there is no law
against one prostitute operating from one apartment. Therefore, the
practice is for the operator to rent an apartment and partition it into many
smaller unconnected units (known as the abattoirs), one per prostitute, for
about HK$300 to HK$400 per day. If the operator is smart, he/she will
have no business relationship other than landlord-renter with the
prostitutes. In this case, the four other arrested individuals
actually controlled the prostitutes. In Hong Kong, it is illegal to
profit from the prostitute activities of others, and this is why the 4 were
arrested.

Once a single-apartment prostitute is set up, she needs to advertise for
clients. This is where the websites come in. The websites are
registered and hosted out of Hong Kong and the websites are likely to be
beyond the reach of Hong Kong law. However, the websites need to have
staff physically present to operate, including photographers to take
photographs of the prostitutes and sales people to visit the prostitutes and
make the sales pitch. Each prostitute pays HK$600 to HK$1,000 per
month for the listing. If there are 1,000 prositutes, then the monthly
revenue could be as much as HK$1 million per month. However, the
police takes the view that the websites are arguably profitting from the
prostitute activities of others, and this is why the 12 people were
arrested. In the present case, the evidence was collected by
female undercover police officers who pretended to be single-apartment
prostitutes and asked to be listed at the websites.

Among the closed websites is www.sex141.com.
If you go there now, there is just a simple message: "This website is
being upgraded and will be offline temporarily until further notice.
We thank all adults for their long-term support of this website!"
I would miss sex141.com if it were no longer around, for the reasons
explained in Sex and the Chinese
Bloggers.

It is also another wonder of Hong Kong in its selective enforcement of the
existing laws. Suppose it is illegal to profit from the prostitute
activities of others. It would seem that the classified ads in the
erotic sections of Apple Daily, Oriental Daily and The Sun are certainly
profiting from the prostitute activities of others. So why doesn't the
police take action against them? That's because the newspapers do not
provide photographers and they do not have sales people knocking on doors to
solicit business. That's a unobvious and subtle distinction. But
if someday the police should decide to take action, then the amount of
accumulated evidence can truly be said to be mountainous.

[053] Wanted
To Hire: Internet Commentators for the Taizhou Government
(06/16/2007) (Boxun)

The Taizhou city publicity department and
Internet administration came up with a proposal to set up city- and
county-level teams of Internet commentators. The newspaper editors'
committee asked that Taizhou Daily name two persons each from its news
center, its editorial center and its supplement section and that the Taizhou
Evening News and the Taizhou Commercial Press to name two each. The
above forms the core of about 30 Internet commentators overall. What
are the qualifications?

(1) The principal duties of the Internet commentators are:
- make positive commentary and articulate main themes consistent with the
work and plans of the city party and government;
- organize persuasive commentary on hot topics to remove doubts and provide
proper guidance on the Internet;
- disclose information on suddenly breaking incidents on a timely basis and
reduce the space for rumors to spread;
- fight back powerfully against the malicious distortions from hostile
forces, dispels the rumors, clarify the facts, increase the ability of the
people to tell right from wrong and oppose the infiltration of the ideas of
the hostile forces.

(2) The basic qualities of the Internet commentators are:
- firm political position, knowledge of overall policy directions of the
party and government;
- firm grasp of current work of the local party and government, including
the related policies and laws;
- familiarity with basic Internet procedures and the unique features and
rules of Internet communication;
- ability to write well and use the Internet language.

(3) Qualifications for the Taizhou Internet commentators:
- the mission is to "publicize for the Party and to speak on behalf of
the people" and to have a firm sense of social responsibility;
- the ability to set up a news commentary website in which the real identity
is disclosed in order to establish a good image;
- act according to the city party and government in the handling of major
suddenly breaking events.

(4) Team building and management
- The Taizhou Internet commentators will receive one-year contracts from the
newspapers;
- the articles published by the commentators will be paid at the same rate
for website correspondents;
- the articles published by the commentators will be graded and included in
the overall annual evaluation.

[052] The
Debt Collector of Changchun (06/16/2007) (Daqi)
At 8:10 am one morning in Changchun, a citizen named Wang proceeded to the
road outside a building. He took off his clothes and sat down.
Mrs. Li was coming out of the building with 8-year-old daughter. He
daughter saw Wang first and pointed at him. Mrs. Li turned to look and
was blushing. "I don't know how to explain to my daughter.
So I took her away in a different direction."

The story here is that the 77-year-old resident named Hu in the building
owed Wang money. According to Wang, Hu owes him 6,00 yuan.
According to Hu, he only owes 4,500 yuan. In any case, there is no
doubt that a debt exists. Hu is unable to repay, and Wang was running
out of options and had to resort this unorthodox approach.

An expert said that Wang should have used mediation or civil complaints to
find a solution. Instead, the naked sit-in is a disruption of social
order.

P.S. This photograph will probably get a Category I: Indecent
classification if published in Hong Kong.

[051] The
Funeral in Sanya (06/16/2007) (QQ)
In Sanya (Hainan province), an old lady named Chen passed away. She
has two sons. One son is the owner of a cement factory and the other
is a senior government official. The son spent money and effort to
organize a solemn and ostentatious funeral with thousands of attendees who
clocked up the street. The funeral ceremony continued for seven days,
with banquets offered each day. The funeral procession on the last day
had several hundred vehicles.

Because of the high-profiled display, this funeral has become the subject of
an investigation by the Chinese Communist Party Disciplinary Committee. Previously,
there was an explicit order issued to party members against using personal
occasions (such as funerals, weddings, birthdays, hospital stays, etc) to
collect bribes (in the form of gifts).

But this particular funeral works the other way around -- the family was not
accepting gifts; instead, they were paying their visitors. Each
visitor who came to burn a joss stick in front of the memorial altar (set in
the middle of the screen as seen in the first photograph) was given 20 yuan.

Maybe this funeral could not be defined as corruption in the sense of
bribery. But it definitely qualifies as an event of 'bad' social
influence.

[050] Chen
Chu Loses (06/15/2007) The big news from Taiwan is the court
decision on the Kaohsiung mayoral election last December. (China
Post) A district court
yesterday annulled Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu's victory in an election that
earned her the mayoral seat, saying she violated campaign regulations.
Chen, from the ruling Democratic Progressive Party said she would appeal,
while the Central Election Commission (CEC) said she would remain in office
pending the outcome of the appeal. The Kaohsiung District Court ruled
in favor of Kuomintang candidate Huang Chun-ying, who sued Chen for making
untruthful vote-buying charges against him. "Chen's team ambushed
the plaintiff with negative campaigning measures during a period wherein it
is banned by election rules to engage in campaigning activities and rendered
the plaintiff unable to defend himself and clarify the allegations,"
the court said in a statement. "This resulted in unfair treatment
of the plaintiff and (Chen's) actions violated the election laws ... the
court therefore declares that Chen's election victory invalid," it
said. ... Chen can appeal the verdict within 20 days, and the high
court will have to return a verdict within six months.

For more details, here is TVBS's
summary of the four major points in the court decision:

(1) Shortly right before the election itself, Chen Chu's
campaign team broadcast certain accusations about "Huang Chun-ying has
been caught in vote-buying." The evidence for her accusations do
not objectively support her conclusions.

(2) Chen Chu's campaign team used a heavy amount of negative
campaign tactics against Huang Chun-ying during the time period before the
election when such tactics are prohibited by law. Huang had no time to
repute those charges.

(3) Chen Chu's campaign team interfered with the ability of
others to hold a fair election, and this is regarded as not permissible under
the law.

(4) The court believes that the actions of the campaign team
were authorized by Chen Chu and she bears the corresponding responsibility.

If the election of Chen Chu is annulled, then she will be
disposed and Huang Chun-ying will be declared the new mayor. If the
election itself is annulled, then a new election shall be held. The
court went for the first option and rejected the second option. In other
words, if Chen Chu loses her appeal, Huang Chun-ying will be the new mayor.

Note: Part of the evidence in the complaint was that Chen
Chu campaign headquarters provided videotapes to Liberty Times, Taiwan Times,
SETV and FTV late in the evening before the day of the election. The law
requires the campaigns to stop all press releases by that time.

[049] What
The Newspapers Will Tell You (And Won't Tell You) (06/15/2007)
(The
Standard)

More than 630,000 public housing
residents will have their rent cut by 11.6 percent from August after
lawmakers passed controversial amendments to remove clauses from statutes
that cap rent at 10 percent of tenants' median income.

Following more than six hours of highly charged debate,
the Legislative Council passed the Housing (Amendment) Bill 2007 by 40 votes
to four. Four members abstained from voting.

Secretary for Housing, Planning and Lands Michael Suen
Ming-yeung said the public housing rent 10 percent limit had proved to be
flawed. In its place now is a flexible rent-adjustment mechanism
based on changes in average household incomes of public housing
tenants. The rent review period is also shortened from every three
years to two years.

As the debate began, about 30 public housing residents
protested outside Legco, demanding lawmakers vote against the bill and its
11.6 percent rent cut, saying it was poison in disguise.

So you will never find out the reason why those protestors
thought that this was poison in disguise.

Meanwhile, do you think that the local Chinese-language
newspapers are going to be more informative? Yes, they gave the protest
a lot of play:

Previously, a mainland Chinese woman named Zhang came to
Hong Kong on a temporary visa. On the evening of the day before
yesterday, she joined the protest organizated by the Alliance for Defending
Grassroots Housing Rights. At around 9pm, the Legislative Council
voted to pass the Housing (Amendment) Bill 2007. More than 10
protestors sat down inside the Legilslative Council building to
protest. They jostled with the security guards and they were arrested
by the police.

As the police were taking the protestors away, Zhang who
had been outside suddenly rushed up to embrace one police woman and kissed
her in the mouth. The female police woman was thoroughly confounded
and began to cry. The other police officers arrested Zhang.

According to the Alliance for Defending Grassroots Housing
Rights, Zhang is not a member and they do not know who she is. At the
earlier protest outside the Legislative Council, Zhang had attempted to make
a speech but she was not allowed to do so.

The policewoman who was kissed

If you really want to find out what is going on, it is up to
independent media such as InMediaHK.

[048] Hong
Kong By The Numbers (06/14/2007) (HKU
POP) (1,011 persons interviewed on June 8-12, 2007 on the
popularity of the Hong Kong SAR and Central govenrments and the people's
confidence in the future)

So, what bad news can be derived from this? Here is a proposed
headline: "Trust in Beijing government dropped 8 points!"

[047] What
They Won't Tell You (06/14/2007) What is on the front page of
the Chinese-language Apple Daily and Ming Pao newspapers of Hong Kong
today? Neither the South China Morning Post nor The Hong Kong Standard
cared to inform their readers about that story which is read by millions of
Chinese residents of Hong Kong.

(Apple
Daily) In March 2006, a Hong Kong University of Science and
Technology first-year male student filed a complaint with the Hong Kong
police. His complaint was based upon the fact that he was reported in
a certain newspaper as having pled guilty to the crime of theft. As a
result of reading the news report, the University had asked him to undergo
counseling. As far as he was concerned, he had nothing to do with the
described crime and he had never been to court, much less pled guilty.
But the fact was that his name was listed in the court trial, he was
identified as a HKU UST student and he was the only student of that name
there. Therefore, he requested the police to clear his name.

The police conducted an investigation and discovered the following
circumstances.

On June 10 last year, the younger sister of the said student used the Hong
Kong ID of her brother to apply for a job at the Wing On Emporium and was
accepted. She was dressed as if she were a male. As an employee,
she stole nine coupons worth $500 apiece from a cabinet. She used five
of those coupons to purchase a Polo handbag. The theft was discovered
and she was identified. When arrested, she admitted her guilt and took
the police to her home to retrieve the other four coupons. She pled
guilty in court and was fined HK$ 500 after asking for leniency because of
the status as a first-year university student. When the police
arrested her, they took her testimony about her identity at face value
without ever questioning whether she was not what she was. They never
sought to check her gender, for one thing.

Here is the question for you. If you encounter the person in the
following photograph, would you have doubts about the gender?

[046] Family
Politics in Taiwan (06/14/2007) The problem with your family
is that you do not get to choose. Politicians are sometimes
embarrassed by their relatives -- Jimmy Carter had Billy
Carter as brother, Bill Clinton had Roger
Clinton, Jr. as brother, George W. Bush has Neil
Bush as brother, etc. In most cases, they have live with the
fact. Even in America, it is considered worse to disown your
family. Instead, you ought to ask the public to understand that your
relatives are full-grown adults who have to be responsible for their own
actions, which you do not necessarily endorse.

(China
Times) In Taiwan, Democratic Progressive Party legislator
Huang Wei-cher announced yesterday that he has decided to break off
relations with his younger sister Huang Jih-shang.

Huang Wei-cher is presently running for re-election. He said:
"Every time that I am attacked, the issue is not about political
ability. Instead, it is about my bloodline being impure."
He said that the outside world cannot possibly imagine the pressure that he
has been put under.

The last straw was when media host Huang Jih-shang accepted an invitation to
address the Central Committee of the Kuomintang. Huang Wei-cher tried
to call his sister and ask her not to attend. When he could not reach
her, he asked their mother to relay the request. The response was:
"That's impossible. I've promised them already." Huang
Jih-shang said: "This time, she went to the Kuomintang Central
Committee meeting. Maybe next time, will she go to the other side of
the Taiwan Strait? ... I don't know what my sister will do next."

Huang Wei-cher intends to publish an announcement in the newspapers.
He does not think that the relationship can be repaired after this election,
because he says that there will be more elections to run for in the
future. Huang Wei-cher said: "I used to hope that we could be one
blue and one green and become the living proof of democracy in Taiwan.
Instead we have now become irreconciliable enemies in the vicious war
between political parties in Taiwan."

Huang Wei-cher said that it was irrational to make this decision for
political reasons. He knows that it is impossible to terminate a
family relationship legally. But he needed to make this public because
he was being victimized and his support was being eroded.

Do you have a problem with your
bloodline? I don't. But DPP legislator Huang Wei-cher says that
his bloodline is impure and that is his biggest problem during
election. The voters do not ask about his political skills, but they
only ask about the purity of his bloodline.

Huang Wei-cher astounds me. He is a
Taiwanese, from Tainan county, just like the present leader Chen
Shui-bian. Normally speaking, this bloodline is the purest of pure and
quite impeccable. He is saying that because he has a younger
sister. Just like him, this sister is a Taiwanese, from Tainan
county. What is wrong with her? The only thing bad about her is
that she detests Chen Shui-bian.

But there are many people who detest Chen
Shui-bian. You can stop anyone in the street and ask, and there has to
be more than just Huang Wei-cher's sister alone. Huang Jih-shang's
biggest problem is that she used to oppose the Kuomintang. Even if she
was not part of the Democratic Progressive Party, she was definitely in the
"opposition" when the Kuomintang was the ruling party. After
the DPP assumed power, her rebelliousness did not change and she continued
to consider herself to be the "opposition" which monitors the
ruling party. When the Kuomintang was in charge, this was known as
"progressive"; when the DDP took charge, this becomes politically
incorrect or even "unorthodox."

Huang Wei-cher is mad at Huang Jih-shang
for making him suffer in his electoral district, to the extent that even his
mother feels bad. When he speaks about the impurity of his bloodline,
it is frankly an accusation against his own parents. In plain
language, this is saying: "Why did you bring this younger sister into
the world for?"

This is most peculiar ... are political
positions really so serious? Taiwan claims to be democratic and
diverse. But if you cannot even tolerate different opinions at the
dinner table, how can there be democratic diversity?

The Democratic Progressive Party is the
party that was established to break down one-party rule and let the hundred
flowers bloom in Taiwanese society. That is why they won the support
of the people. Once this democratic party took charge, it does not
want diversity anymore. It won't even allow a party member to have a
sibling that has different political opinions.

... It is hard to imagine that the voting
preferences inside a household could be made uniform. It is very
normal to have different types of supporters. Why else is this called
a democratic election? In 2000, in my own home, my mother and sister
voted for Chen Shui-bian while my father wanted to vote for Lian Chan.
My mother made fun of this: "Why bother with that vote?" My
father laughed and said, "Hmmm ... the people have the right to vote
freely. This is none of your business." With my husband's
family, we asked each other about our voting preferences. Nobody said
anything and they only carried mysterious similes. "This is a
secret ballot, so you should not interfere with what others do."
But the domestic helper could not help but interject: "I have even
received the bribe money for my vote. Why would I go and
vote!" The whole family laughed their hearts out. My guess
was that there were voters for Lian, Soong and Chen in that household.

Come 2004, and the voting preferences were
obviously uniform without even having to ask. But we lost. We
signed. We watched the crowds on Ketagalan Boulevard on television,
but what can they do? One week later, when we turned on the
television, we only worried about when the crowds would go home. If
they don't go home, the stock market will not rise. Such is life, such
is democracy. But when Huang Wei-cher thinks that his younger sister's
political position was a factor in his re-election, then the problem is with
his brain, not his bloodline.

[045] The
M-Shaped Society of Hong Kong (06/14/2007) (Ming
Pao; Yahoo)
There is more technical discussion in Ming Pao today of the evidence
for/against the case of the M-shaped society in Hong Kong. On one
hand, there had been Francis Lui (HKUST) who argued against the case (see,
for example, Gini Index in Hong
Kong). On the other hand, three HKU researchers are arguing
for the case.

When these technical matters are being debated in a general newspaper, some
details are hidden because the common readers do not know enough about the
data or the analytical techniques. But this just leaves a lot of
dissatisfaction.

Let me give an example here. The chart below comes the 1996 and 2006
distributions of household income (adjusted for inflation). The
horizontal axis represents the household income percentile (the footnote
gives the example: a family at the 25% percentile will have 75% of all
households having higher income than them and 25% of all households having
lower income than them). The vertical axis is the number of
households.

I find the description of the chart very confusing. Let me tell you
how I would have constructed this chart based upon this description.
Assume that there are 2 million households in 1996. My goal is to
divide the households into 100 percentile "buckets." (say, 0%, 1%,
... , 99%). By definition, each buckets shall contain exactly
2,000,000 / 100 = 20,000 households. I achieve this by listing the
2,000,000 households by income in a list and sort them from low to
high. The lowest 20,000 cases shall fall into the 0-th percentile; the
next 20,000 cases shall fall into the 1-st percentile, ... , the top 20,000
cases shall fall into the 99-th percentile. If I were to put the
distribution in a chart, it would be a flat line from 0% to 99%, with 20,000
households at every percentile mark. Assume that there are 2.4 million
households in 2006. Then the corresponding chart would be another flat
horizontal curve with 24,000 households at every percentile mark. This
chart below represents something else.

According to the chart legend, the 1996 data were fitted as the blue-colored
curve; the 2006 data were fitted as the red-colored curve.

There are two areas shaded green at the two ends of the curse. In both
areas, the red line (for 2006) is above the blue line (for 1996). This
is taken as evidence that there are more poor (to the left) and more rich
(to the right) households in 2006 than in 1996. Therefore, it is
argued Hong Kong is moving towards a M-shaped society with more poor and
rich households.

If you are interested in the technical details, you will have to wonder: Why
is this a 'fitted curve'? The original Ming Pao article has a graph of
the original data points. That is, the analysts did not have access to
individual household income records. Instead, they were using
published aggregate information that exists only at certain
points.
Is this a good curve fit? Let us say that the technicians may have a
debate about it.

[044] Hong
Kong By The Numbers (06/13/2007) (HKU
POP) (1,022 persons interviewed June 1-7 about the popularity of
government officials)

Clearly, the last three on the list are not very popular right now.
Stephen Lam is responsible for realizing universal suffrage and other
political reforms; Michael Suen has been involved in the Star Ferry and
Queens Pier issues; Arthur Li has weeks of hearing over whether he wants to
"rape" the Hong Kong Institute of Education. All three have
their own problems now.

This leads us to the Apple
Daily story:
The data for the rating on Donald Tsang (based upon asking the respondents
to assign a score of 0 to 100) are:
68.9 marks during April 2-10, 2007
68.7 marks during April 17-20, 2007
67.3 marks during May 4-9, 2007
68.1 marks during May 16-25,2007
66.8 marks during June 1-7, 2007
[Technical note from HKU POP: Media can state "sampling error of
ratings +/- 1.0 at 95% confidence level" when quoting the above
figures. "95% confidence level"
means that if we were to repeat a certain survey 100 times, using the same
questions each time but with different random samples, we would expect 95
times getting a figure within the error margins specified."]

So Apple Daily summarized this story with the headline:

曾蔭權民望創兩個月新低
(in translation: Donald Tsang's popularity ratings reaches new two-month
low). If I make the technical interpretation for you -- THERE HAS BEEN
NO STATISTICALLY SIGNIFICANT CHANGE IN THE RATINGS FOR DONALD TSANG OVER THE
LAST TWO MONTHS. But that would never stop the headline-writing editor
who wants to look for bad news.

[043] All
Car Robbers Will Be Shot Dead Immediately (06/13/2007) (China
News) On May 30, 2007, a police vehicle in Yingyang city had a
red banner draped on its side. The words were: "If you commit a
robbery from a vehicle, you will be shot dead immediately."
(yWeekend)
On June 1, Wang Dawei analyzed the situation at his blog. In just 4
days, the blog post was read by more than 110,000 persons with more than
3,600 comments. "98.2% of the netizen comments were in favor of
the message in the banner, 1.8% ask for a rational response but nobody
opposed it."

Here are the reasons for supporting the banner:
(1) According to the law, the police may deploy weapons when they encounter
arsonists, murderers, rapists and other violent criminals who refuse to
follow orders.
(2) "This is wonderful! They should have done it
earlier." "These criminals are so abomindable. With
this, this will rein them back."
(3) There has been no vehicle-based robberies in Yingyang ever since the
banner was displayed at the end of April.
(4) "The criminals usually snatch stuff from motorcycles. The
citizens find it hard to watch out for them. They are also hard to
catch."
(5) The banner is used to frighten the criminal. But in reality, the
police will continue to be cautious when it comes to using guns.

Here are the reasons for opposing the banner:
(1) Guns are used to control the criminals, not to execute them. This
language is inconsistent with the humanitarian spirit. For example,
you can shoot to disable the crminal. Why is it necessary to shoot
them dead?
(2) Whether a criminal suspect merits the death penalty should up to the
courts, not the police.
(3) The slogan represents the position and attitude of the police, and has a
certain severe and frightening aspect. But such a slogan may create
the impression that the police has backward ideas about the legal system.
(4) It is going too far to shoot the robbers on
vehicles dead at the scene.
(5) In most civilized countries, the principle is to use the minimal amount
of force to resolve a particular situation.

[042] The
Yahoo Statement On Shi Tao (06/12/2007) There was a brief
statement from Yahoo about the lawsuit filed by the
World Organization for Human Rights USA, Shi Tao, Wang Xiaoning and his
wife, Yu Ling. So far, public attention seems to have focused on the
first part of the Yahoo statement (for example, Nieuwsbank).
At Associated
Press:

"Yahoo is dismayed that citizens in China have been
imprisoned for expressing their political views on the Internet," the
company said in the statement faxed to The Associated Press, which asked
Yahoo to comment on Shi's lawsuit. The Internet company also said it
has told China that it condemns "punishment of any activity
internationally recognized as free expression."

But there is a second part in the Yahoo statement:

However, Yahoo added that companies
operating in China must comply with Chinese law or their employees risk
facing civil or criminal penalties.

Here is the old ESWN post: The
Third Way For Yahoo (February 11, 2006). I have yet to read anyone
who could propose a viable way for Yahoo to operate in
China such that it could (1) protect freedom of speech/press; (2) comply with
legitimate requests from law enforcement; (3) satisfy the terms of its
Internet Content Provider license. The most constructive advice is for
yahoo.com.cn to make it very clear that they will cooperate with law
enforcement.

If neighborhood relocation does not consider people first,
then we might as well as go back to holding criticism sessions of
landlords. At a time when the awareness of civil rights is rising and
the people want to be their own masters, the "relocation gangs"
are having a hard time. In the Chongqing nail house case, the
authorities and the real estate developers were embarrassed. So what
happens when you come across more nail houses? A brilliant
mind has come up with a solution in the Jiuxianqiao area of Beijing -- "Let
us all vote on this! If the majority agrees with demolition, then we
go ahead and get rid of the nail houses!"

On June 9, a "people's referendum" was held for
the 5,473 households affected by the project. At 11:40pm, as witnessed
by public notaries and observers, the Jiuxianqiao street association
announced the results: 2,451 "yes" versus 1,228 "no"
with 32 voids for a total of 3,711 votes. Therefore, the project will
proceed.

This "referendum proposal" was challenged
strongly by the media and netizens from the very start, and the doubts will
continue. The simplest question is this: As asset owner, each person
has control only over his/her own assets. Since I don't have the
right to use my signature to withdraw money from your bank account, why
should you have the right to use your signature on a ballot to take away my
house?

... In recent years, people are often heard debating
whether democracy is a good or bad thing. In my view, democracy had
better be something first. If democracy isn't even anything, then we
should not be debating about whether democracy is good or bad; we should
instead be debating whether democracy is real or fake. We see here
that a certain government department had manufactured a non-existent
"public interest" in order for the Jiuxianqiao residents to hold a
"public referendum. Obviously, this type of so-called democracy
which uses public opinion to damage the rights of others by voting is not
true democracy. It is not the kind of democracy that our generation or
previous generations longed for. According to Tocqueville's
explanation, the "Jiuxianqiao style of democracy" is at most
"the tyranny of the majority." According to my
understanding, they had organized a "morally justified robbery with the
participation of the majority of the people." The worst part is
that in front of the majority, each one of us is a potential victim of
exploitation.

[040] Leaper
Hell at Manchester Cathedral (06/11/2007) At a Hong Kong
Chinese-language blogger dinner last Saturday, the question came up:
"Which ones of you here play video games?" and I raised my
hand. As evidence, I showed the calluses on my thumbs. My video
game machines are the Sony PS2/PS3/PSP. When you buy a Sony PS3
machine, the free game is Resistance: Fall of Man. This
leads us to this AP
story:

The Church of England accused Sony on
Saturday of using a cathedral in Britain as the backdrop to a violent
computer game, and said it should be withdrawn from shop shelves. The
church said Sony did not ask for permission to use Manchester Cathedral and
demanded an apology. The popular new PlayStation 3 game,
"Resistance: Fall of Man," shows a virtual shootout between rival
gunmen with hundreds of people killed inside the cathedral. Church officials
described Sony's alleged use of the building as "sick" and
sacrilegious.

I've played the Manchester Cathedral segment many
times. I do not consider this to be a "shootout between rival
gunmen." This is not a WW II game of Allies versus Nazis. Instead, it is a science
fiction game set in 1951 with the fictional enemy being the Chimera race
that was created accidentally from biological experiments conducted in
Russia in the 1930's. The point is that when the enemy is
de-humanized, then any action against them is permissible. Even in real
human wars, the enemy is usually de-humanized (the Nazis skunks, the Vietnamese
gooks, the Iraqi hajjs, etc). Anyway, here is the description of the
action at (IGN
FAQ):

As you get near the opening to enter the Cathedral, a
new creature will jump up over the wall. Meet the Howler. This is the
biggest, meanest dog you'll ever meet. If you read the last Intelligence
Document you picked up, you'll see why I told you to arm the Rossmore.
This animal is going to come right at you and he's going to do it quickly.
He'll be in your face before you know it, and when he is, put a double
shot (L1) of Rossmore in HIS face. The Howler will shake off the first
shot and come at you again, so put a second double shot into his face and
he'll go down for good. When the Howler is dead you will have reached the
moment you have been waiting for. Your vision will blur and this disaster
of a chapter will be over.You're inside the Cathedral now, and in the
midst of Leaper Hell. Leapers in numbers greater than you've ever seen are
pouring off the walls to both sides of you. As soon as you have control,
immediately back all the way up to the door to the Cathedral and arm the
Rossmore. This is a wide doorway, but you can still use it to try to
funnel the rush of Leapers. Just keep shooting into the groups to keep
them from making it to you. You're going to need all the health you can
keep when this is over, so don't let them get to you. As long as you keep
spraying the doorway with the Rossmore, you should easily keep yourself
scratch free by the time they stop coming at you. Don't worry about your
friends. There was nothing you could have done for them anyway. When the
wash of Leapers has stopped, you will still hear the screaming and if you
look carefully ahead to the other end of the Cathedral, you'll still see a
bunch of them collected down near the end. Move forward just a bit and
spray the remainder with your Carbine. Things will fall silent when they
are all dead, but this only lasts for a couple of seconds.

Watch the boards blocking the opposite end of the
Cathedral and they will soon disappear into a cloud of dust. Get just
close enough to this archway so that you can throw 2 or 3 grenades into
the dust cloud as soon as it happens. Ladies and gentleman, meet the
Steelheads. The Steelheads are much larger, much stronger versions of the
Hybrids and they are wielding the weapon known as the Auger. There is no
escape from the Auger, as it has the ability to shoot through cover, and
as the round passes through cover, it actually increases in strength. If
you managed to get about 3 grenades into the archway before you even saw
the Steelheads, there is a pretty good chance you got both of them down
before they got too close to you, but if one does make it through, he
probably took a beating from the grenades and shouldn't take much to lay
him down. If you didn't have any grenades, keep moving to avoid the Auger
rounds. Stop long enough to put a tag on one of them and empty a clip as
you dodge back and forth. When they are down and done for, arm yourself
with the Rossmore and cautiously head for the freshly opened archway.

As you get to the archway, you'll be met from the other
side by a Hybrid and a Howler. The Hybrid is going to stay on his side,
but the Howler wants a bite of your butt, so back away from him and put
two double shots from the Rossmore in his face to lay him down. If you
haven't already, snatch up an Auger of your very own from one of the
recently deceased Steelheads and head back up to the archway to take care
of the first Hybrid you saw and two more that decide to join in the fray
as well. Stay on your side of the wall and use the Auger to shoot them
through the wall. The reticle will turn red when you have an enemy in the
Auger's sight, so just fire right into the wall and wait for the screams
from the other side. When those three are silent, take some time to
explore the Cathedral, pick up any health and ammo you need.

Here are some pictures of the enemy soldiers -- if you
don't shoot them dead, they will surely kill you without mercy.

A netizen has posted a video of his play of the Manchester
Cathedral episode at YouTube.

The point here is that "War Is Hell." In war, nobody pauses
to contemplate that a particular location is sacrosanct. If you have
to enter a location and kill the enemies, then it is just business as
usual. During World War II, a German bomb severely damaged the
Manchester Cathedral; it took nearly twenty years to repair all of the
destruction. If you don't like this, then you better think about
changing the rules of engagement. But please bear in mind that game
theory predicts that disadvantaged combatants will break the rules in
order to use sacred sites as sanctuaries in order to change the odds, and
this has happened frequently when Iraqi insurgents operate with mosques as
their bases.

[039] A
Complaint to the Television and Entertainment Licensing Authority
(06/11/2007) The Hong Kong Television and Entertainment Licensing
Authority has turned down complaints against the Bible, the Koran, the Plum
in the Golden Vase, the erotic pages in Apple Daily/Oriental Daily/The Sun
and who know what else. The purpose of those complaints was to force
TELA to make a ruling in a case that it does not want to be involved in
because of the consequences in local and international public opinion.
You can imagine what would happen if the Obscene Articles Tribunal found the
Bible to be indecent material.

Finally, an intrepid Hong Kong netizen has found a perfect case (see HK
Golden Forum). There is a website based in Hong Kong. On
one of its pages,
there is a link to a free teen porn
page. A complaint has been filed already. If the Television and
Entertainment Licensing Authority or the Obscene Articles Tribunbal should
find the linked page to be Category I: Neither Obscene Nor Category, then
all hell will break loose -- anyone and everyone can freely post those
photographs on their websites because the TELA/OAT has spoken thus.
TELA/OAT just has to find that linked page to be Category 3: Obscene
material. Having done so, it must pursue the link provider to the full
extent of the law, right? We are talking about the rule of law in Hong
Kong, right? Here is the identity of the website -- an official Hong
Kong SAR government website which has neglected to patrol its comment
section and permitted spammers to insert pornographic links. But that
should not matter, because the defense of incompetence and/or negligence
should occur during a court trial (and not before!). It is not the job
of TELA/OAT to ask why and how the links appeared; their job is to refer
indecent/obscene material for prosecution.

[038] The
Hong Lok Yuen By-Election (06/11/2007) Where in the world is
Hong Lok Yuen? Unless you are a true political junkie, you would not
know about the June 10th by-election in Hong Lok Yuen, much less its
implications for the Hong Kong Civic Party.

Hong Lok Yuen is a district council election seat in the
Taipo district of New Territories in the Hong Kong SAR. The previously
elected district councilor Man Chun-fai has decided to take on a more senior position and
therefore his seat is up for re-election now. There will be another
district council election for all of Hong Kong SAR later this year and this seat
will be up for re-election again. But the result of this by-election
will probably be indicative of what will happen in the upcoming election.
That is to say, the winner of this election will likely win again in November.

As always, the best analysis comes from the blogger Derek
Greyhound. Here are his analyses:

The Candidates: There were only two candidates: Tang Yau-fat who
used to work for the former district councilor Man Chun-fai, and Ho Kwok-keung, who is a
professional engineer. Neither candidate listed political party
affiliation. However, Tang Yau-fat is with the rural sector that is
supported by the pro-Beijing DAB while Ho Kwok-keung is supported by the
pro-democracy Civic Party.

Demographics: The estimated population in 2007 is 14,856 persons, of
which about 4,629 are registered voters. There are four distinct sectors
in the district: (1) the upscale Hong Lok Yuen housing area; (2) the villages near the
Fanling district; (3) the private homes near Hong Kong Yuen and the old Taipo
market; (4) the villages and private homes near the Taipo Industrial Estate.

This setup reflects an M-shaped community -- there are some rich people and
many poor people. In terms of personal income, 15% make more than
HK$40,000 per month and more than 30% make less than HK$8,000 per month.
Both are higher than the population percentages. In terms of education,
more than 25% have university education and 20% have only elementary
education. In terms of occupation, 25% are managers, administrators and
professionals and 25% are in fishery and agriculture. Both education and
occupation exhibit the M-shaped features.

In terms of population size, the Hong Lok Yuen housing area has about 1,200 voters (or
25%). By comparison, the villages have about 3,000 voters (or 65%).
Anyone who wins the villages (in an overwhelming manner) will win this
election.

In terms of social issues, the Hong Lok Yuen residents have their own upscale
homes which should not have any issues with management and security; they
drive their own cars and they will therefore not be concerned with public
transportation issues; they are therefore more concerned about the images and
positions of the candidates. By contrast the village residents will be
concerned about basic infrastructure, recreational areas, drainage, street
lamps, road repair/maintenance or even public benches to sit on.
Traditionally, these problems are solved through the village network ties.

Prior Electoral Results: In 1999, the previous district councilor Man
Chun-fai won
by 786 to 431 votes over a Liberal Party candidate. In 2003, the same
person won by 1,171 versus 495 over another candidate with the same rural
village background.

Analysis of Outcomes: This is a lopsided contest, since Tang
Yau-fat has the support of the local establishment, and he has a local field organization
as well as the politcal accomplishments. Ho Kwok-keung has no local
record or organization and his sole appeal is professionalism as an
engineer. Ho might be good enough for the Hong Lok Yuen residents but he
has no appeal to the village residents.

Election Platforms:

Tang
Yau-fat
"I am an independent candidate with no party affiliation. I was
born here and I grew up here alongside Taipo. I have been involved in
community service for more than twenty years. I am practical and
pragmatic in serving the community: I want to act as the bridge between the
government and the people, to obtain the rightful interests and benefits for
the people, to improve the environment, public health, transporation and other
matters ... if I am elected, I pledge to complete the unfinished work of the
previous councilor Man Chun-fai ..."

Ho
Kwok-keung
- monitor the status of ongoing environment improvement projects through
professional analysis
- monitor air pollution by the Tai Po Industrial Estate
- take concrete actions to improve outbound transportation for local residents
- support sustainable development by implementation of better local planning
- universal suffrage by 2012

Predictions: Assuming a turnout of 45%, there should be 2,000 votes of
which Tang Yau-fat will get 1,400-1,500 (or 70%-75%) while Hon Kwok-leung will
get 500-600 (or 25%-30%).
Actual Results: First of all, the weather was atrocious as there
were red/yellow rain warnings for six hours in the early morning. Out of 4,625
registered voters, 1,424 cast votes (at 30.78%) (see Election
Affairs Commission). So the Derek Greyhound blogger was too
optimistic because he was basing it upon the voter turnout in the 2004
Legislative Council election under normal weather conditions.

Finally, out of the valid votes, 374 went to Ho Kwok-keung and 1,046 went to
Tang Yau-fat. Thus, Tang Yau-fat got 73% of the votes (see Election
Affairs Commission). So the Derek Greyhound blogger was right
on.

Post-mortem analysis: If the pre-election analysis was dismal, the
results confirmed the predictions. The question is whether the Civic
Party and the pan-democrat camp will understand that they cannot compete on
this basis (namely, parachuting an outsider into a community and expect to win
on the basis of the brand name (plus handing out some flyers in the street and holding
a few press conferences)).

When the video clip began, the middle-aged man had already
fondled the woman. The bus is parked by the roadside and there are
only a few passengers left on the bus. The middle-aged man is wearing
a white shirt and black trousers. He is trying to get off the bus, but
the driver blocks him and tells him that the police are on the way. A
young woman is sitting in the front row. She is wearing very short
pants and has long hair.

The middle-aged man went back to sit down. The woman
curses him: "You just wait. I'm telling you. You cannot
fondle just anyone on the bus. You better check who it is ... Have you
ever experienced a woman? You are a sex fiend ... You have gone too
far. If you want to be 'dirty', you should not be dirty with me ..." The man
mumbles something, which only draws more curses.

Then the woman stands up and screams even louder. A
man in uniform enters the bus from the front door and proceeds to kick
the middle-aged man in the face (note: this occurred around 2:00 into part I of the video
clip). The middle-aged man's body swayed to the side upon
impact. Another male passenger rushes up to stop the assault.
The uniformed man yells and threatens: "I'm going to kill
you!" Then he steps off the bus. The middle-aged man is holding his head with both hands in
distress. He tries to get up twice but another male passenger tells him to
sit and wait for the police, who arrives and tries to reconstruct the scene
in Part 2.

This video was loaded from a Guangzhou IP address on June
8th at 3:53pm. By 7:53pm, there were 5,700 viewings. The video was
also posted on the front page of the Oeeee.com portal. The Internet
comments were mixed. One big question was the flying kick from the
uniformed man (probably a military soldier or a militia police officer).
What gives him the right to take action into his own hands (eh, his
foot)? How does the rule of law operate in China?

[036] The
Biggest Opening Day For A Sina.com Blog (06/09/2007) (Sina.com)
At 10am on June 7, the 68-year-old novelist Qiong Yao (琼瑶)
launched her own blog at Sina.com. Within the next 24 hours, the blog
had more than 1 million visits and more than 3,000 comments. This was a
record since Sina.com began to offer blogging service in 2005.

There are only three blog posts so far. The first one is an
introduction. The second one is about the newcomer who will star in the
television-adaptation into a drama series of one of Qiong Yao's most famous
novels. The third one is about her own work on this new drama series.

If it were not for this revolutionary step for a Xiong Yao
show, we would have forgotten about the traditional Xiong Yao style.
Yes, these are shows in which people cry all the time or speak in highly
literary style. These shows are now broadly disliked by the general
public, which is like comparing the old songs of Teresa Teng to that of Jay
Chou today -- they just represent the youths of different eras.

Nowaways, people wonder what is the big deal about
love? But in the not so far gone era of Xiong Yao, love was such a big
deal. You can sigh, you can cry and you can even die for it. The
Xiong Yao fans who used to run away to read her novels in a corner are
loyals fans of the Korean drama <Jewel of the Palace> nowadays.
Now they get a chance to relive those memories. They may be sneered at
by young people who are at their own age back then, but that is actually
fine for this is exactly how love evolves over time. Perhaps we will
be able get a re-reading of the Xiong Yao spirit of love.

[035] EastSouthWestNorth
on Wikipedia (06/10/2007) Someone wrote: "You're
strange. As a blogger, you have a Wikipedia
entry in English as well as a Wikipedia
entry in Chinese. Very few bloggers have that. Anyway,
which side of the Chinese-language or
English-language blogosphere do you feel that you belong?"

How many factors need to considered? I list the following, but there
may be more.

(1) I write in English, and therefore my audience is necessarily those who
read English by definition. But that is not answering the question of
which side I feel that I belong.

(2) While I write in English, the sentiments, attitudes, opinions, values
and positions that I present are actually more consistent with the
Chinese-language blogosphere. After all, much of this website consists
of straight translations of Chinese-language blog/BBS posts into
English. Even though I do not present my own values, opinions and
attitudes with respect to the translated contents most of the time, it
should be clear that I selected those items for translation because they
must appeal to me personally in some way or fashion. On a typical day,
I must read several hundred blog posts, forum posts and news reports.
Why do I choose a small number (five or fewer) to translate into
English? Most of the time, it will be because I felt some sympathy and
empathy for the selections. In a few cases, though, I will translate
something because it is currently 'popular' even if I do not personally
agree with the positions. Along this dimension, therefore, I belong to the
Chinese-language blogosphere. That is the whole raison d'être
of this blog -- to show the English-only readers some (but it can
never be all!) of what the Chinese people are writing, reading and thinking
about.

(3) Irrespective of all the above, I find that my social contacts and
interactions are almost completely within the Chinese-language
blogosphere. The Chinese-language blogosphere is definitely not
monolithic, because there are different segments based upon BSP (Blog
Service Provider), interests (e.g. media, politics, literature, ...),
etc. Yet the nature of this blog is that I am somehow involved in many
of these segments. It is a compliment to the Internet that I have
lived in the United States without making any real friends, whereas my blog
has introduced me to an unimaginable number of Chinese speaking/writing
persons from all walks of life in Hong Kong alone. By comparison, I
can discern little or no such activity within the English-language
blogosphere in Hong Kong. Along this dimension, I belong to the
Chinese-language blogosphere of Hong Kong in an overwhelming manner.

(4) There is also the matter of groveling for hits. Like it or not, I
have a popular blog. A mention in this blog's list of recommendations can
trigger a traffic surge. Here I am not saying that this website is
Digg or MetaFilter wherein a mention can bring in tens of thousands of
visitors. I am only saying that the traffic referred from this website
can make a 'significant' difference to those blogs wanting to be known (in
English as well as in Chinese). Such being the case, you can imagine
that people might want to grovel for hits by writing posts that sing praises
of this blog in the hope of getting reciprocal links. Sorry, but it
does not work that way. You can bring something to my attention, but
ultimately your work will have to stand on its own merits before I can
recommend it. That's that.

(5) But why should the Chinese-language blogosphere care about some guy who
writes in English? I think that they believe that I serve an important
role. There is an ancient Chinese saying: "Good things do not
travel outside the home; bad things travel one thousand miles 好事不出門，壞事傳千里."
My role is to be the person who spreads the bad things one thousand miles away
(i.e. all over the world). For example, in the matter of all the
happenings at the Television and Entertainment Licensing Authority/Obscene
Articles Tribunal on the censorship/freedom of speech incidents, one important
factor is to bring in international pressure that puts the international reputation and
brand of Hong Kong at stake. Does Hong Kong want to be become an
international laughing stock for judicial decisions that are arbitrary,
inconsistent, repressive, out of step with global standards, etc. The
Chinese-language blogosphere in Hong Kong can talk for all it wants, but the
world would not be any wiser. Due to
its popularity, my English-language blog is considered a good venue for
reflecting the prevailing opinions of the Chinese-language blogosphere in Hong Kong as well
as triggering an international outcry. Therefore, the Chinese-language
blogosphere appreciates the translations of their thoughts on this matter.

But I am being redundant here. After all, my blog is considered to be a
prototypical bridge blog (see Bridge
and Ladder Blogs).

A China-based Microsoft site is testing a
new software that draws a sharp profile of Internet users, including age,
sex and geographic origin, writes Reporters Without Borders (via The New
Scientist). The software draws conclusions, not by form entry, but by user
behavior.

The goal of the new software is to better
target its advertising, but Reporters Without Borders points out the
software could be used to target "subversive citizens."

The organization stated, "[We] believe
it is unacceptable to carry out this kind of sensitive research in a country
such as China, where 50 people are currently in prison because of what they
posted online.”

... The New Scientist drew its report from a study called
"Demographic Prediction Based on Users’ Browsing Behavior,"
published by researchers working in a Beijing Microsoft lab.

The study outlined methods that enable the verification -
and clarification - of information provided on online forms by comparing
entries to their surfing habits. The information would be drawn from
surfers' browser cache and cookies.

Erectile difficulty is a condition that afflicts 7.1
million adults in the United States. There are 216 million adults in
the United States. The top 10% predicted by the best model contains 3
million of these adults with erectile difficulty. Thus, somewhere
within the top 10% of 21.6 million adults are 3 million with erectile
difficulty. Good? From the opposite view, 18.6 (or 86%) of this
top 10% are "false positives."

We note that under the legislation H.R. 4567, Department
of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, 2005 (Public Law 108-334), it is
required that "the underlying error rate of the government and private
data bases that will used both to establish identity and assign a risk level
to a passenger will not produce a large number of false positives that will
result in a significant number of passengers being treated mistakenly or
security resources being diverted."

For example, could the 19 terrorists involved in the 9/11
attacks have been detected beforehand? Unfortunately, there is no
software that can generate the names of those 19 and no one else. The
problem is not with the software. Rather, there is a limit to the
informativeness of any known data. Instead, the best software based upon
the currently known data may generate 100,000 names of which the 19 persons
are included. The FBI does not have the resources to mount full
investigation on all 100,000 names.

In like manner, the number of "subversives" in
China is actually small relative to the total population. A predictive
model for "subversives" will yield a list of names (say 400,000
names) who have high probabilities of being "subversive." The
number of "false positives" is likely to be higher than 99%.
As many employees as the security departments have, they still do not have the
security resources to mount full investigations of the named persons.
That is why they don't do it. This is not about them being tolerant or
lenient; this is just a straightforward problem in resource allocation.

The Microsoft software is about a different problem in
advertisement targeting. They are not interested in individuals; they
are only interested in aggregate results. Thus, they can say -- if the
advertisements are randomly, presented, the gender composition will be 60%
male and 40% female. However, by targeting based upon the content of the
browser cache, they can improve the percentage to 80% male for a razor client,
or 80% female for a cosmetics client. There are still numerous false
positives, but this targeting has made the same number of servings of the
advertisement more efficient.

Similarly, in the erectile difficulty problem above, if you
want the list of 7.1 million adults with the condition handed to you and
nobody else, then the mission is impossible with any model because of the
limits in the available data. But what if you want to run a direct mail
campaign to 21.6 million adults? You can mail at random and there will
be 710,000 target persons among the 21.6 million. Or you can use the
predicted top 10% which has 3.1 million target persons.

In theory, predictive analysis involves mapping a known
pattern of terrorist behavior — for instance, the sequence and timing of
such mundane activities as bank transactions and travel purchases —
against a massive collection of such records like the NSAC databases. If an
individual’s actions match the pattern, they can be considered a suspect,
even if they have no known ties to any suspected terrorists or known
terrorist groups.

Such a method would help identify “sleeper cells,” the
FBI claims in its request — secret groups of terrorists living innocuously
within the United States, waiting for a signal from a terrorist group leader
to assemble and strike.

But to date the approach has not proven workable. So far,
terrorism researchers “cannot readily distinguish the absolute scale of
normal behaviors” for terrorists or ordinary Americans, conceded a 2006
document from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and
obtained by National Journal magazine. In other words, no one can figure out
how terrorists act differently from normal Americans.

“We had no idea how on God’s earth you would
characterize and capture normal behavior,” a former researcher for the
ill-fated Total Information Awareness (TIA) program told the magazine last
October.

[033] Hong
Kong's Feelings Towards Different Governments (06/09/2007) (HKU
POP) (survey of 1,008 persons conducted on May 16-25, in which
respondents were asked to rate their feelings towards various governments as
either "very positive", "quite positive,"
"half-half," "quite negative" or "very
negative.")

[032] Media
Coverage of the Zhengzhou Mass Incident (06/09/2007) (ChineseNewsNet)
Mainstream local media have gone totally silent while Internet posts are
being deleted. The Zhengzhou Internet News Administration Center sent
out notices to ask the Internet forums "to assist in deleting related
forum posts in order to eliminate bad influences." According to
someone at the Henan Institute of Finance, "the superiors have defined
this to be a political incident."

But the influence of the Zhengzhou authorities do not extend outside of the
city. On this day, Beijing
News picked up the story. Here is a hint how the story is 'bad
influence' -- According to an eyewitness, "When the city administrators
walked by me, I smelled alcohol. The faces of the city administrators
were also red. They had obviously been drinking."

On May 31, a netizen with the nickname "Waiting for
the red apricot while standing at the top of the wall" posted on a
Wenzhou Internet forum: "As he went by the Rui'an Lower Pond Luofeng
Garden, he spotted a banner that said 'Robbery is not as good as stock
speculation' and the attribution is to the city public security bureau.

This photograph aroused a great deal of public attention
as well as the attention of the Rui'an public security bureau. Using
technology, the Rui'an public security bureau located the netizen named Lin
with the nickname "Waiting for the red apricot while standing at the
top of the wall." Lin is a recent university graduate who lives
in the Rui'an Lower Pond area.

The story was that Lin had received a photographs from a
classmate. He thought that it was meaningful and so he made up the
circumstances surrounding this banner (that is, he observed the banner while
passing by Luofeng Garden in Rui'an Lower Pond) and thus smeared the public
security bureau. In accordance with the Criminal Law, the Rui'an
Public Security Bureau sentenced Lin to three days of administrative
detention for his crime.

If this photograph did not come from Wenzhou, then where did
it come from? One rumor has it coming from Shenzhen, but the Shenzhen
Public Security Bureau has made an unequivocal denial. Another rumor has
it coming from Fuzhou's Sanqiao district. An Internet campaign involving
netizens canvassing the Sanqiao district also precluded this possiblity.

Finally, one PhotoShop expert proposed that the photograph was faked: the
words in the banner were completely straight when the banner itself was not
perfectly straight! It is not known who created the first photograph.

[030] Hong
Kong Laden On Trial (06/08/2007) (Apple
Daily; Apple
Daily) In Hong Kong, the individual known as "Hong Kong's
Bin Laden" is on trial for threatening Oriental Daily.
Previously, he had been sentenced to six years eight months for threatening
to put poison in supermarket food for the purpose of forcing the resignation
of the Chief Executive and other senior officials.

But this time, Hong Kong's Bin Laden took a different tack, because he is
not threatening to bomb Oriental Daily for the purpose of forcing the
newspaper to close down, or any such. The starting point is with the
core strength of the newspaper Oriental Daily. For people who want to
talk about democracy and freedom, the lead Hong Kong newspaper is Apple
Daily. Yet, the top selling newspaper in Hong Kong is Oriental Daily,
which is often hostile to the pro-democracy camp (as well as to the Hong
Kong SAR government too). So what is its attraction? From Wikipedia:

The Oriental Daily is credited for a couple of
breakthroughs. In 1977, it was the first local paper to launch a complaint
page. These complaints could be against both public agencies (including
governmental departments) and private companies. Readers can phone, fax or
even complain through the internet using realtime conference system. If the
reporters find the complaints interesting, they investigate and report them,
acting as a sort of ombudsman for their readers. This has contributed to
local newspaper's role as an influential channel for citizens to express
their ideas and articulate their antipathy. The complaint page also
reports on the response from the target of the complaints. It thus tries to
stay neutral and fair, aiming only to arouse public awareness on the issues.

So the attraction of Oriental Daily is that it is a
service-oriented newspaper that manages to deliver for the grassroots, very
much like the district councilors might. The difference is that the
district councilors may take months before getting a result, whereas the
largest newspaper in town can deliver quicker and even more effectively.

So this time, Hong Kong Bin Laden set up some banners and
displayed them at prominent locations such as the Golden Bauhinia at the Hong
Kong Convention and Exhibition Center, the Causeway Bay MTR station, the Tai
Koo MTR, the HSBC Headquarters Building, Exchange Square, etc. Like any
other Oriental Daily reader, Hong Kong Bin Laden wrote letters of complaint to
Oriental Daily on a specific issue of public interest that he described in
those banners.
"Hong Kong Bin Laden"

It is the nature of that complaint that makes it so juicily
ironic. Hong Kong Bin Laden is complaining that two brothers Ma Sik-chun
and Ma Sik-yu are suspected of being major narcotic smugglers in Hong Kong and
they are presently fugitives from the law (note: Ma Sik-yu is supposed to have
died in 1992). Hong Kong Bin Laden wants Oriental Daily to mount a
public campaign to pressure the Hong Kong government to follow up on this case
and seek justice. Yes, so what? In Hong Kong, Ma Sik-yu is known
by his nickname "White Powder Ma" because of his involvement in the
heroin trade. Ma Sik-chun is known as "Oriental Ma" because he
was the founder of Oriental Daily!

At the trial of Hong Kong Bin Laden, the Oriental Daily
Group vice chairman Lai Kam-wah was questioned in court about the founder of
Oriental Daily and admitted that he was aware that Ma Sik-chun was summoned to
appear in court but fled to Taiwan without ever returning to Hong Kong.
When Lai was asked whether he was aware that the case involved the sale of
heroin, Lai paused for a while before he said: "I don't personally
know."
(Lai Kam-wah)

With respect to the complaints that Hong Kong Bin Laden
filed with Oriental Daily against the Ma's, Lai said that Oriental Daily
welcomes complaints from citizens but "you can write but that does not
mean that we will accept the complaints." Asked about his knowledge
of whether Oriental Daily ever investigated the case of the Ma brothers as
well as the libel lawsuit filed by Oriental Daily Group against Next Weekly,
Lai said that he does not know. "I can't possibly know
everything."

Let it be added that Lai is one of the very few people
in Hong Kong who does not know.

(Daily Fongyun)
Previously, the Obscene Articles Tribunal had classified the February and
March issues of the Chinese University Student Press as Category II:
Indecent material. Subsequently, Ming Pao carried the survey questions
in CUSP and was also classified as Category II: Indecent.

Recently, some citizens followed through with the Ming Pao decision to lodge
complaints against both the Society for Truth and Light as well as Sing Tao
for also citing the CUSP survey questions. The Obscene Articles
Tribunal has just responded to the citizens: the Society for Truth and
Light's audio reading of the survey questions as well as the two articles in
Sing Tao (page A07, May 7, 2007) have been classified as Category I: Neither
Indecent Nor Obscene material.

(Ming Pao)
Previously, the Obscene Articles Tribunal had found the erotica section of
Chinese University Student Press to be Category II: Indecent material.
Following the lead, some citizens lodged complaints against the erotica
pages in the daily newspapers Apple Daily, The Sun and Oriental Daily.

The Obscene Articles Tribunal has just announced that the preliminary
classification for all these erotica pages are Category I: Neither Indecent
Nor Obscene. From Pandemonium:
Oh, so Ming Pao is the dirty newspaper instead of the others. I had
been subscribing to it for a long time, and it has polluted my mind.

[028] In
The Realm of Fantasy (06/08/2007) (Southern
Metropolis Daily) At Yunnan University, a masters student
named Wang Nan in the Communications Department submitted a thesis entitled
<Language in online games -- using In The Realm of Fantasy as
example>. Wang Nan is a level 61 wizard in the game In The Realm
of Fantasy. Apart from the written thesis, there was an oral
defense in front of a committee. Of the 24 masters students, 23 passed
with unanimous votes but Wang Nan was voted down 4-2 in committee.

As a result, Wang Nan is trying to get justice. He is not trying to
get through the university channels. Instead, he is try to conduct a
public campaign over the Internet. In his Sina.com blog, he argues
that the other these shared similar problems and there was no reason why
they were passed with unanimous votes."

Even his advisor Zheng Sili is involved, because he is writing on his own
blog that Wang Nan should have been passed. "As an advisor, I
thought that Wang Nan's thesis was not bad. I find it unacceptable
that his thesis was not passed." Zheng said that the same thing
has happened three years in a row and this shows that there is academic
corruption at the Yunnan University. Wang and Zheng said that if the
case is not fairly handled, they will sue in a court of law.

The chairman of the thesis committee Guo Jianbin said: "The thesis
defense process is long and it is not done yet. But they have already
taken the case to the Internet. That is too extreme. This type
of publicity-hunting is not good and it is not acceptable. This matter
should have been solved through the normal channels in the
university." He also said: "Wang Nan's thesis is not a
thesis at all. He was just describing the language on an online game,
which has nothing to do with a thesis. His essay contained a large
number of screen captures, but he offered no theoretical
interpretation. His essay is an assembly of raw materials without any
analysis. This was just an overview of an online game."

Guo Jianbin was also displeased with Zheng Sili: "It is normal to
disagree in academic issues. The debate over any thesis should be
about the text and not the person. But Zheng is talking more about the
person and not the text. In the past couple of years, Zheng had
students who did not pass the oral defense, but were ultimately passed after
amending their theses."

In Shenzhen, more than a hundred police including seven
carloads of riot police with attack dogs quelled a mass incident yesterday.

At 3:30pm, the Southern Metropolis Daily hotline received
a citizien tip that there was a big fight in the Huaxiangbei area. The
reporter arrirved at the scene 20 minutes later and saw several thousand
spectators gathered at the scene. Two used mobile phone markets were
at that location. There was smoke rising from the scene and shouts of
"Fire!" Several men were pointing at the spectators and
screaming: "What are you looking at?" and "Get
lost!" Then a man emerged from the market with a fire
extinguisher and sprayed the crowd with fume. Several dozens of men in
blue with steel pipes in hand were standing in front of the building.
Two police attempted to address them with a loudspeaker. The men in
blue also waved the steel pipes at the spectators and yelled: "No
photographs." They also forced the spectators who were taking
photographs with their mobile phone cameras to hand over over their
equipment.

Afterwards, the reporter was told by an informed source
that there was a clash between the security guards from the two markets as a
result of a dispute over the public space between them. More than one
hundred people fought with steel pipes and knives, and many counters inside
the markets were smashed.

[026] More
on the Zhengzhou Mass Incident (06/08/2007) (Apple
Daily) On the night of the incident at around 9pm, several
city administrators went to the university district to clean out the
curbside vendors. They began by destroying the oven used by an old man
to bake potatoes. Then they overturned the setup of the female student
Wang Hua (

王花). She asked: "You could have just fined me. What did
you have to overturn my setup?" One of the city administrators
replied with venom: "Are you going to say something else?"
Then he slapped her in the face. Working together, the city
administrators pinned the female student down on the ground and assaulted her,
knocking out her front tooth in the process.

A male student observed what was happening and tried to intervene while also
calling the police. When the police arrived, the first thing they did
was to take the male student into the police car. This infuriated the
other observers who surrounded the police car to demand the release of the
male student. The news of the incident spead over the various
university campuses in the area and many more students arrived. The
police behaved with a bad attitude, which only caused more public
outrage. There were physical contact and some of the people even
attempted to tip over the police car. Some angry students set a city
administration vehicle on fire.

[025] The
Zhengzhou Mass Incident (06/07/2007) (The Zhengzhou city
government via Dahe
Net)

At around 18:00 on June 6, 2007, the city administration
law enforcement team in the Jinshui district of Zhengzhou city was clearing
out the illegal sidewalk vendors when a clash occurred with one
merchant. This drew the nearby citizens and students to gather and
watch, and blocked traffic in the area. During the process, the
security patrol members clashed with individual citizens and students.

After the incident, the Jinshui district party/government
paid a high degree of attention. After an investigation, a number of
city administration workers have been severely punished overnight.

[a list of eleven persons were named with corresponding
punishment including reprimands, demerits, dismissmals and detention]

The district party/government urges all law enforcement
agencies in the district to draw a lesson from this incident.

What could these city administrators have done to cause
punishments be handed out against them overnight? What exactly are these 'clashes'?

The version of the same story not from the Zhengzhou city
government was as follows (see also Boxun):

On the evening of June 6, a female student from a nearby
school set up a sidewalk stall and ran into the team of city
administrators. During the law enforcement process, four to six city
adminstrators physically assaulted the female student, including knocking
out some of her teeth.

When the police arrived, the female student was placed on
a stretcher under handcuffs while sobbing in pain. The section of the
road was blocked by spectators who could not understand why the persons who
assaulted the female student were not arrested. When the scene got
ugly, the city administrators got into the police car, but the other
students surrounded the car to prevent it from leaving. During the
process, the police behaved with abodminablea attitudes (

警察的态度恶劣)
and the crowd began to rock the police car. The police attempted to
arrest some of the crowd members, which made the whole crowd even angrier
because the police did nothing with the city administraots. The crowd
did not manage to overturn the police car, but they moved it five meters
down the road. Finally, more police came to extract the police
officers at the scene. So the crowd turned their attention to the city
administration's vehicle, which they overturned and set on fire.

... Concerning the PX affair, the mainland media did not
seem to have made any reporting. All the public opinion pressure came
from the Internet and mobile telephones. In China, the media are the
public voice. In the past, if you control the media, then there is
nothing that the people can do to raise a storm. Unfortunately, that
era has gone past. Even if the Internet is filtered and even if mobile
telephones are blocked, the citizens of Xiamen could not be prevented from
calling out for the PX project to be stopped. This is about "the
era of YOU" where you finally have your own turf, even though your
"turf" used to be occupied by others.

It is hypothetical whether the Internet can accelerate the
progress of democracy in China. Maybe it can be proven in
theory. But we now have a live and actual example in front of us and
we cannot ignore the power of the Internet. In the past, the
government made its decisions on the basis of the will of the senior
officials while ignoring the existence of the interests of the people.
The reason for that neglect is that they can use brute strength to shut the
people up and disallow any dissident voice. Because they can act as
they wish, this has become a habit.

In the Internet era, they think that they can do whatever
they want. But in the case of the PX project, they encountered the
strongest "nail house" ever. This was not a single person
who wants to fight back, but this was an entire group of people. In
its notice, the Xiamen public security bureau said: "The citizens can
express their opinions and recommendations through the normal
channels." The problem is: What would happen with the normal
channels of communication? Since when have our government departments
established normal channels of communication? At least, I have never
seen them. If you don't allow normal channels, the people will use
unusual methods. Once they use unusual methods, you will suffer.

The Xiamen PX project actually posed a very serious
problem to the government departments. You must change your mindset
and not use your unreasonable ways of handling things because that can only
intensify conflicts. You must see that people exist and you must
listen to their voices, or else it will be embarrassing. Did not
Comrade Deng Xiaoping say: "The revolutionary party is not afraid of
listening to the calls from the people. It is only afraid of
silence."? Secretary General Jiang said: "Represent the
basic interests of the broad masses of China." The leaders cite
these clichés everyday, but their actions show differently. It seems
that the theory does not work! But aren't we talking about building a
harmonious society nowadays? If you keep telling the people to build a
harmonious society while your government departments are not harmonious,
then how can the people be harmonious? How can this society be
harmonious?

Water can carry boats, but they can also be used to make
rice soup. This time, the Xiamen government was turned into a pot of
rice soup by the people. Of course, we cannot be so optimistic as to
think that the Xiamen people's experience can be extended to the entire
country. That is wishful thinking. But I am still worried that
at some time later, how many Xiamen citizens will lose their jobs, how many
students will be forced to quit school and how many "other
persons" will lose their freedom?

If President Bush and Vice President Cheney can blurt out
vulgar language, then the government cannot punish broadcast television
stations for broadcasting the same words in similarly fleeting contexts.
That, in essence, was the decision on Monday, when a federal appeals panel
struck down the government policy that allows stations and networks to be
fined if they broadcast shows containing obscene language. Although
the case was primarily concerned with what is known as “fleeting
expletives,” or blurted obscenities, on television, both network
executives and top officials at the Federal Communications Commission said
the opinion could gut the ability of the commission to regulate any speech
on television or radio.

... Beginning with the F.C.C.’s indecency finding in a
case against NBC for a vulgarity uttered by the U2 singer Bono during the
Golden Globes awards ceremony in 2003, President Bush’s Republican and
Democratic appointees to the commission have imposed a tougher policy by
punishing any station that broadcast a fleeting expletive. That includes
vulgar language blurted out on live shows like the Golden Globes or scripted
shows like “NYPD Blue,” which was cited in the case. Reversing
decades of a more lenient policy, the commission had found that the mere
utterance of certain words implied that sexual or excretory acts were
carried out and therefore violated the indecency rules.

But the judges said vulgar words are just as often used
out of frustration or excitement, and not to convey any broader obscene
meaning. “In recent times even the top leaders of our government have used
variants of these expletives in a manner that no reasonable person would
believe referenced sexual or excretory organs or activities.”
Adopting an argument made by lawyers for NBC, the judges then cited examples
in which Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney had used the same language that would be
penalized under the policy. Mr. Bush was caught on videotape last July using
a common vulgarity that the commission finds objectionable in a conversation
with Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain. Three years ago, Mr. Cheney was
widely reported to have muttered an angry obscene version of “get lost”
to Senator Patrick Leahy on the floor of the United States Senate.

[022] Taiwan
By The Numbers (06/05/2007) (China
Times) (829 adults interviewed by telephone on May 31-June 1.
A sample was drawn from the telephone directory and then the last two digits
of the selected numbers are randomized. The results are weigted be
gender, age and region).

Q1. How are the economic conditions at present compared to before? 4%: better
21%: same as before
69%: worse
[Note: In mid-February 2007, 48% thought that things were getting worse
while 17% thought that things were getting better.

Q2. How is your family income this year compared to last year? 9%: increase
36%: same as last year
47%: decrease

Q3. Are you worried about employment (for yourself or your family
members)?54%: Yes
43%: No

Q4. Are you find the price increases?56%: unbearably high
32%: moderate
7%: same as before

Q5. Is the rich-poor wealth gap increasing or it does not matter in
Taiwan?88%: increasing
5%: it does not matter

Q6. There is saying that Taiwan is becoming an M-society in which
the rich get richer, the poor get poorer while the middle class is slowly
vanishing.81%: agree
11%: disagree

Q7. How does the quality of your life compare to before?13%: better than before
46%: the same as before
40%: worse than before

Q8. Which is the main factor that is affecting economic development
in Taiwan?42%: bickering between the political parties makes administration
impossible
32%: the Chen Shui-bian administration is corrupt and incompetent
7%: international competition
6%: cross-strait issue

台灣加油
! Taiwanese hero !
(06/05/2007) The following email was sent here:

Dear ESWN

This video and currently on YouTube and potentially explosive. But
just reading the comments for this video is enough to get a good feeling
about what it is like to be Taiwanese..... I thought you like to know of its
existence.

It is a video about the great Taiwanese nation (in the people's sense of
the word) featuring achievements of athletes at the Olympics or
Ultramarathoners. It is a fine document (and the comments demonstrate
it as well) at how establishing a Taiwanese identity is threatened by almost
everything: The Chinese (government and people), the Taiwanese themselves
(Guomingdang supporters not wanting to part from China) and so on.

Yet the video does indicate that there is among young people a sense of
Taiwanese identity which is very much striving to rid itself from the
intense charged politics of cross- straits politics and its neverending
power game.

(Ming Pao)
As for the Ma Lik effect (see Ma
Lik's Comments on June Fourth for the background), the attendance
figures are (according to the organizers) 55,000 in 2007 compared to
44,000 in 2006. Therefore, the Ma Lik effect is calculated at 55,000 -
44,000 = 11,000. Police figures are 27,000 in 2007 and 19,000 in
2006. So the Ma Lik effect is 27,000 - 19,000 = 8,000 in that case.

[019] The
Famous Changsha Street Banners (06/05/2007) (163.com)
"Anyone who uses a car to commit robbery and attempts to resist arrest
will be shot dead immediately!!!"

"Driving at 50% above the speed limit
leads to a 2,000 yuan fine and suspension of driver's license."

"All unlicensed drivers will be detained without exception."

"Using the car license plates of others
results in detention of vechile and 2,000 yuan fine."

"Obstruction of law enforcement will result in detention without
exception."

[018] The
Chengdu Evening News Classified Ad (06/04/2007) (ObserveChina)
On page 14 of the June 3d issue of Chengdu Evening News, there is one line
which says: "Salute to the strong mothers of June 4th victims!"
Allegedly, Chengdu Evening News will be
punished with a one-day suspension of the publication. It is unknown
if individual workers will be punished.

(UDN)
In mainland China, it is necessary to present an ID in order to place a
classified ad. The authorities do not preclude the possibility that a
fake ID had been presented. Even after the ad has been submitted,
there are three stages of checking. But this ad passed the
inspections. The principal reason may be that the current editor or
advertising agencies are manned by young people who do not know much about
the original incident. As such, this ad message may be referring to
the victims in a traffic accident.

A young woman unaware of the June 4
Tiananmen crackdown is believed to have let an advertisement saluting the
mothers of students killed in and around the central Beijing square make its
way into a Chengdu newspaper, highlighting the national collective amnesia
about the events of 18 years ago. Two
sources with connections to the Chengdu Evening News, which ran the
controversial 13 character classified adverstisement on Monday, said the
woman, who worked for an advertising company responsible for the newspaper's
classified section, was in charge of receiving content from clients.

A man visited the copmany on May 30 and the woman took
down the advertisement - which read "Saluting the adamanat Tiananmen
Mothers" - from the client without knowledge of the June 4 crackdown,
the sources said. "She called the man back
two days later to check what June 4 meant and the man said it was [a date
that] a mining disaster took place," one source said. The woman's age
was not known but the source said she had just graduate from school.

[017] Hong
Kong By The Numbers (06/04/2007) (The
Sun) (3,199 persons age 18 or over in Hong Kong
interviewed last Wednesday to Saturday)

From which social sector do you think the most capable
Chief Executive can be found? Why?

Public servants (36%)- 56%: familiarity with how the government is run
- 14%: senior government officials are usually elites
- 14%: not too many private interests
- 13%: support by public servants which makes it easier to govern
- 3%: other reasons

Business/Professional (17%)- 34%: more pragmatic, policies will be less aggressive
- 29%: familiar with Hong Kong economy, push forward future development
- 18%: have connections to recruit talents
- 13%: bring new ideas to government
- 6%: other reasons

Democrats (10%)- 49%: can accelerate the pace of democratization
- 18%: local networks to keep in touch with public opinion
- 15%: support by democrats in the Legislature
- 12%: no close ties with business interests
- 6%: other reasons

Patriots (8%)- 49%: good relationships with central government
- 25%: connections in various strata, can help different interests to
negotiate
- 13%: political stance is not extreme
- 5%: locally powerful, able to mobilize people
- 8%: other reasons

Why does Hong Kong lack people with political talents?- 37%: too much social strife, people do not want to enter politics
- 28%: talented people enter business sector instead
- 12%: political leaders refuse to hand over power to younger generation, who
cannot rise up through the ranks
- 11%: British colonial administration waited too long before allowing democracy

[016] Bag
Ladies of Mongkok (06/04/2007) (Ming
Pao) Yesterday, Hong Kong police swept through the vice
district of West Kowloon and arrested 46 women believed to be mainland
prostitutes and 16 men (including two patrons). The charges are
keeping a vice establishment, violating the terms of stay, illegal
immigration, concealing a weapon plus one additional charge.

This would be a routine case but for that additional charge. The
mainland women are charged with violating the terms of stay (if they came on
a tourist permit, for example) or illegal immigration (if they have no entry
permits). They will not be charged wtih prostitution, because that is
not a crime here. The 14 men will be charged with keeping a vice
establishment (Crimes
Ordinance, Cap 200, section 139). The additional crime here is
'procurement of a girl under 21 to have unlawful sexual intercourse' (Crimes
Ordinance, Cap 200, section 132). This is a rarely invoked article of
law with a maximum sentence of 5 years of imprisonment. Previously,
the law was applied only to the procurers. But the police believes
that if a client asks the procurer specifically for a female under 21 to
provide sexual services, he may be prosecuted until this section of the law.

The police also stated that in the competition for clients, some procurers
are offering anal intercourse service. The police reminds the public
about Crimes Ordinance, Cap 200, section 118D is 'buggery with a girl under
21' and that carries a maximum penalty of imprisonment for life.

[015] Yet
Another Wise Guy (06/04/2007) (Sing
Pao) Previously, a 14-year-old boy was arrested in Hong Kong
for claiming on his blog that he was a triad gang member. Now there is
a second case.

Earlier this year, the police were monitoring the Internet discussion areas
and found someone claiming that to be a member of the Wo Hop To (

和合圖)
triad gang in Wah Fu Estate in western Hong Kong. The person also
disclosed that he had participated in gang fights and negotiations. He
mentioned a list of names of gangsters that matched ones that are on the
Organized Crime unit's watchlist. The police located the IP address of
the person who posted at the discussion forum. Through the assistance of
the Internet service provider, they located the exact apartment.
Yesterday morning at 9am, seven police investigators arrived at the
apartment. The person's mother let the investigators in. The
person was still asleep at the time. When the investigators questioned
him, he admitted that he had posted at the discussion forum. The police
then arrested him and took away two computers for evidence.
According to the mother of the 31-year-old man named Lee, her son had been
brought up very strict by his late father and therefore he was mentally
repressed. Lee had a cousin who took advantage of his timidity and
bullied him often. Lee posted the message at the discussion forum under
the name and address of that cousin in revenge.

The Hong Kong police reminds citizens that all anti-crime laws in the real
world also apply to the virtual world on the Internet.

[014] The
Twilight of Democracy in China (06/04/2007) (Asiaweekly
(YZZK), June 10, 2007; no link available)

If the June 4th incident is vindicated, that would imply
that democratic rule will arrive soon in mainland China. This is the
assessment of the Chinese democratic movement veteran Ren Wanding. He
said: "When will the Chinese Communists vindicate June 4th?
According to past practice and historical experience, it is not likely that
the leadership will vindicate the June 4th incident. This is an old
Chinese Communist rule. For the longest time, they will not vindicate
any past political mistake. If we vindicate June 4th today, we will
expect to have democratic reforms tomorrow and we won't wait.
Therefore, the authorities will be very careful."

Ren Wanding had gone to jail twice for the democracy
movement and spent eleven years in prison. Upon approval by the
Beijing Public Security Bureua, Ren Wanding traveled for the first time
outside of mainland China with his wife to spend one week in Hong
Kong. This visit was for a physical examination and also to meet with
friends. He had no problems entering and returning from Hong
Kong. On the day after he returned to Beijing, he was visited by the
Beijing Public Security Bureau workers in a meeting that was characterized
as "routine" and "pro forma."

His Hong Kong friends were concerned that he spoke about
sensitive topics such as the June 4th incident and the democratic movement
while in Hong Kong such that he may not be permitted to return to mainland
China. Ren said: "I was bold enough in what I wrote in
Beijing. I said whatever I wanted to say without a care. So why
should I censor myself once I arrive in Hong Kong? The Beijing
authorities will not punish me for what I said in Hong Kong.
There is no need for me to release my steam in Hong Kong. I have
released everything while I was in Beijing."

... Ren Wanding believes that there has been a change in
attitude by the Chinese Communists towards dissidents. In the 1950's
and 1960's, China pursued the class struggle line and it was a matter of
"life-or-death." At the end of the 1970's (during the
democracy wall movement in 1978-1979), there emerged a modern demcoratic
movement. The Communists treated the political prisoners of that
movement as "there is only me and not you" instead of
"life-or-death." They did not kill anyone; they only
arrested and imprisoned them. "As long as I am in charge, your
democracy will not be realized."

In the 1950's and 1960's, the rightists did not dare to
resist the authorities, who would squash any resistance. In the 1970's
and 1980's, the new democrats dared to resist and fight back. Ren
Wanding said: "I was arrested in 1979 for the democracy wall. I
resisted during my interrogation. They interrogated me for seven days
in a row but I refused to answer their questions. I asked them
instead: 'You have done no investigation and you arrested me for
counter-revolutionary incitement and propaganda?' They did not
respond. Throughout the proceedings, they did not resort to
torture. They sentenced Wei Jingsheng to 15 years and I was sentenced
to 13 years. In 1981, Hu Yaobang took over from Hua Guofeng and he
issued this so-called benevolent directive of releasing us ahead of
time. I was released after 4 years. I was later sent to Qincheng
prison on account of the June 4th incident ..."

Ren Wanding believes that during the 1950's, the
authorities actively attacked the so-called class enemies. By this
generation, the authorities were reacting instead. Ren Wanding was
unlike the so-called class enemy who had to report once a week after their
release to the local public security bureau to write a report on his
thoughts. He said: "This was an evolutionary process. Our
actions showed that we must be treated rationally. You can detain and
sentence me, and there is nothing that I can do about it. But you have
to respect my character. After a long time of mental fighting, the
police chat with me and said: "We know that you only want to promote
democracy but not advocate violence. We know that you are doing this
for the nation and its people.' We moved them with our own
actions."

[013] The
Zhao Yufen Story (06/03/2007) At first, it seems peculiar that
I would translate The
Zhao Yufen Story. While Chinese Academy of Sciences member
Zhao Yufen brought the Xiamen PX project to national prominence through
the joint letter signed by 106 Chinese People's Political Consultative
Conference members, she has been mainly silent in recent days. In the
Southern Weekend report on The
Xiamen PX Project:

During the sensitive period around May 27,
Xiamen University academician Zhao Yufen who instigated the proposal from the
Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference members declined to be interviewed by
Southern Weekend ... Zhao told the Southern Weekend reporter: "It
is not appropriate to be interviewed because the academic debate has risen to
a non-academic level." During a break in a meeting on the evening
of May 28, she whispered: "Things have become more and more
complicated."

The tidbits in The
Zhao Yufen Story provide some hints as to why she behaves this
way. A simplistic summary is that (A) she is a moral person and (B) she
believes in organizational discipline. Sometimes (A) does not mesh with
(B).

What gives me the right to make this sort of broad assertion about an
individual? Zhao Yufen's curriculum vitae:
1971-1975 PhD State University of New York at Stony Brook. My curriculum
vitae: 1971-1974 BS State University of New York at Stony Brook; 1975-1978 PhD
State University of New York at Stony Brook. Indeed, we were
acquaintences and we were part of the Chinese overseas student movements of
that era.

I can also say that the People.com.cn story about her in The
Zhao Yufen Story is not totally accurate. She was not allowed to
return to Taiwan most likely because of her presentation of flowers to the visiting
delegation of Chinese scientists and other similar activities related to
mainland China and not just because she visited her maternal grandparents in
Henan province. In that era, the State University of New York at Stony
Brook was a battle zone between the Republic of China and the People's
Republic of China, and it is certain that people were filing reports left and
right back home. Zhao Yufen was not the only person barred from returning to
Taiwan.

So why did Zhou Yufen decide to return to China? That is for her to
explain. Based upon my perceived knowledge, it was for an ideal because
power and money can be excluded with certainty (because she returned to China
in 1979 and there can be no power or money in her situation). I don't know where she
was or stood on June 4th, 1989. But she took a stand in 2007 with
respect to the PX project, at the risk of losing funding and support for her
work at Xiamen University. I cannot say more about her situation or
state of mind, because I really don't know.

[012] Next
Weekly As The Usual Fall Guy (06/03/2007) (Taipei Times via AsiaMedia)

A dispute erupted among Democratic
Progressive Party (DPP) legislative hopefuls yesterday after questions were
raised over the credibility of the party's public polling process. ...
The dispute arose after the Chinese-language Next Magazine said DPP
Legislator Huang Chien-huei had leased 1,000 telephone lines in his own name
to boost his chances of being called to take part in the poll. The
magazine said 150 telephones had been set up in an apartment in Sanchong,
Taipei County, while the other 850 lines were being directed to those 150
phones. The weekly said that Huang had staffers on stand-by in the
apartment who had been told to say that they supported Huang if they were
called by the pollsters.

Huang dismissed the report, saying the
phone lines had been set up on May 15 to send recorded messages to voters,
but that they were canceled 10 days later because of software problems.

It is by now normal to dismiss the 'tabloid' magazine Next
Weekly (which happens to have the higher circulation in Taiwan) to be peddling
sensationalism at the price of destroying freedom and democracy in
Taiwan. Maybe. But have you actually read what Next Weekly
presented?

Next
Weekly (subscription required) received a tip that the DPP candidate Huang
Chien-huei in Taipei county District #2 had recently
ordered 1,000 temporary telephone lines. They went to investigate.
At a certain new building in Taipei county, 150 of these lines were
installed. Next Weekly used a graphic illustration to show the building,
which is still not officialy ready for people to move in as construction
continues. The chairman of the construction company is the wife of a
close associate of Huang Chien-huei,
but this is circumstantial evidence.

Yes, but so what? This is just a graphic artist's sketch of some
building or the other. Another graphic illustration in Next Weekly shows
a close-up of three floors inside that building. There are some some
light-colored desks with telephones on them as well as some red-colored
stools. But this is just a graphic illustration. Next Weekly
alleged that each floor had 50 telephones. Yes, but so what?
Graphic illustrations do not constitute proof.

And then the Next Weekly photographer got inside one of the apartments and
took a photograph of the desks and telephones. This was clearly a
temporary setup with the barest functional furniture and telephone
equipment. The telephones were all Chunghwa Telecom e-life push-button
models. The boxes in which they were brought over were still in the
corner of the room and indicated that these are temporary rental sets (for a
total number of 150 of such sets). The photographer noted that the
stools have unique Chinese-letter markings
(

小輝俠).

Then the Next Weekly photographer went to the Huang
Chien-huei campaign center and found the same
red-colored stools with the same markings (小輝俠).

The marking 小輝俠
was used by Huang Chien-huei in
his promotional direct mailing piece:

Now you can compare the Next Weekly report to the summary by cold (and
factual) summary in Taipei Times. Is something missing here? You
can also consider the denial from Huang
Chien-huei in Taipei Times: "Huang
dismissed the report, saying the phone lines had been set up on May 15 to send
recorded messages to voters, but that they were canceled 10 days later because
of software problems." Does this setup look anything remotely like
a system to send recorded messages to voters? As Huang Chien-huei's
competitor Lin Shu-fen pointed out, if you want to sent out recorded messages,
Chunghwa Telecom can do that for you at NT$100,000; if you want to do your own
public opinion poll, any company will do it for NT$200,000. So why did
Huang Chien-huei spend NT$1,000,000 on these phone lines?

[011] The
Folk Guy Controversy (06/03/2007) First, there was
the official song ("Always with you

始終有你")
for the tenth anniversary of the return
of Hong Kong to China. You can watch this at YouTube.

Next, a Hong Kong blogger Lam Kay and his friends came up with a spoof version
entitled ("Folk Guy's Always With You 福佳始終有你")
with the same music but different images and lyrics. You can watch this
with English subtitles at YouTube. For the record, the English-language
lyrics are (via Lam
Kay) (technical note: there are some major mistakes in this
translation, but these are the 'official' lyrics that will be sung in a
soon-to-come English-language video).

This is presently a controversial issue at the Chinese
Wikipedia. Given the 'sensitive' subject, some people object to
maintaining an entry for this song. Here are their reasons:

- Copyright violations. Fact: There is no copyright issue for this song
under Hong Kong law.
- Spoofing (

恶搞).
Any number of other spoofs are included in Wikipedia.
- Lack of audience. The spoof is a lot more popular than the official
version on YouTube.
- Lack of media coverage (not enough mainstream media and Internet
mentions). I cannot force the newspapers/television/radio but I can talk
about this story and increase its Google hits right now. Any number of
Chinese-language Hong Kong bloggers have done so too.

[010] Hong
Kong By The Numbers (06/02/2007) (Ming
Pao) After sitting on complaints against the erotic pages in
the major Hong Kong daily newspapers for two weeks, the Television and
Entertainment Licensing Authority has decided to forward six issues from
three newspapers (two issues per newspaper) to the Obscene Articles
Tribunal. If the materials are found to be Category II: Indecent, the
maximum fine is HK$400,000 and 12 months of imprisonment. Since
similar materials have appeared in these newspapers for years and some of
them were found to be Category II: Indecent. Therefore, these
newspapers are repeat offenders who should receive a heavier fine.

The scores are:
- 6 complaints against the May 18 and May 19 issues of Apple Daily
- 19 complaints against the May 17 and May 27 issues of The Sun
- 204 issues against the May 13 and May 17 issues of Oriental Daily

Ordinarily, the Television and Entertainment Licensing Authority will
forward one essay (or one essay plus the accompanying photographs) to the
Obscene Articles Tribunal. This time, the Television and Entertainment
Licensing Authority has referred the entire erotic section for
classification. According to the law, a preliminary classification
will be made within five days.

While the maximum penalty is HK$400,000 and 12 months of imprisonment, the
actual fines have been small historically (e.g., HK$5,000 and no jail time).
HK$5,000 may be a lot to a student editor of the Chinese University Student
Press, but it is nothing for the newspapers which rake in billions each
year. The bottom half of the
erotic page consists of classified advertisements for entertainment (e.g.
phone sex, 'massage parlors', etc). The revenue from those classified
advertisements exceeds HK$5,000 by a large factor, so these fines are
meaningless. More to the point is that it puts Oriental Daily/The Sun
under the spotlight -- they were the most vocal media critics against the
Chinese University students from a moral high point, but they turn out to
be in a moral abyss themselves.

P.S. I don't ordinarily buy and read the printed newspapers. The
online editions of these newspapers do not carry the erotic pages of their
print editions. When I go to my regular restaurant, I usually pick up
their free copies of Apple Daily and Oriental Daily to read. But I do
not get to read the erotic pages because the manager removes them first
thing. His explanation: "This is standard restaurant industry
practice. Some of our customers get upset." The newspapers
typically has two pages (front and back) of erotic material. Removal
of the section means that two other pages are removed as well (because each
physical sheet of paper carries four pages (front and back, left and
right)). For
Apple Daily, it means that the entire horse racing section is
discarded. For Oriental Daily, it means that two pages of local Hong
Kong news are discarded.

[009] Numbers
in Taiwan (06/02/2007) (China Times via Yahoo!
News) Here are the tracking numbers in Electoral District #4 of
Taipei County.

During the 2004 presidential election, the KMT and DPP were separated by 5%.
During the 2005 county mayoral election, the KMT and DPP were separated by
3%.

In May 2007, there were three separate public opinion polls for the DPP
primary election.
Company A found DPP support level at 36.88% and the KMT support level at
9.92%.
Company B found DPP support level at 41.24% and the KMT support level at
8.90%.
Company C found DPP support level at 44.51% and the KMT support level at
8.64%.

Does this mean the DPP will win this electoral district hand down in the
next election?

Actually, this is not so easy. One interpretation is that KMT/PFP
supporters will slam the phone down because they are aware that the DPP
polls are going on. The discrepancy above therefore represents
differential cooperation rate. The other interpretation is that one or
more of the DPP candidates are using phanthom telephone lines to rig up
their support levels (which are DPP).

[008] Single
Blog (06/02/2007) Two years ago in May 2005, the joint letter
in Blog
Is Blog was a request by Hong Kong bloggers to ask the mainstream media
to describe blogs as something more than just teenage online diaries.
Back then, bloggers simply got no respect. This week, I saw a Hong
Kong movie titled "Single
Blog" (

單身部落).
I have never heard of the movie, so the only reason to see it was the word
"blog." The movie was some kind of "Sex in the City"
story and it had nothing to do with blogs or blogging. This title was
chosen because the word "blog" is sufficiently ingrained into youth
culture today and it may even draw a few more viewers like myself (note: I am
not young but I am a blogger). Bloggers have come a long way since ...

[007] The
Bobai Mass Incidents (06/02/2007) (Zaobao via ChineseNewsNet)
A businessman in Bobai said: He has two sons but they did not pay the
fine (i.e. social childcare fees) and they are not sterilized. Five
years or so ago, his sons were feverish and he took them to the
hospital. The Population Planning people told the hospital not to
threat the children unless the couple paid 2,000 yuan in fines. The
businessman refused. That night, half a dozen men came from the
Population Planning Department to take his wife away for
sterilization. But the businessman was smart and he also got a half
dozen young man over at this house. He told the Population Planning
people: "I have half a dozen young men. If you guys can get past
these young men, I will pay the 2,000 yuan in fines. If you guys
cannot get past them, I will use the 2,000 yuan to wine and dine
them." So the Population Planning Department people backed
off. Later, the businessman paid 600 yuan in fines and the hospital
treated the children. But the businessman is not sterilized although
his wife wears an IUD.

The Bobai conflicts was foreseeable. Early this year, State Council
issued its report on population planning strategies with emphasis on
population control. Boabi was named as a "dead spot" insofar
as having serious problems with meeting goals. I went to gather news
in various towns of Bobai and I got no sense that there was any restriction
on the number of children. None of the families that I came across had
only one single child. The typical number is three children.
Even people who already had sons continued to have more children. When
asked why, the locals said as-a-matter-of-factedly: "We rural people
are like that." For them, it was about having a son to continue
the lineage as well as showing the strength of the family through
numbers. The toughness of the local people and the long-term
inattention and laxity of the local government caused Bobai to be a
"dead spot." Overseas media also suggested that the local
government officials were using population control as a means of letting the
people have more children and then blackmailing them for money afterwards.

But when the pressure came down from the superiors, the officials attempted
to implement the population control goals within a period of one or two
months. This concentrated the contradictions to the highest levels
within the shortest timespan, and led to a seris of disturbances.
Afterwards, it seems that the populationg control goals have gone by the
wayside once again.

[006] Mobile
Telephony and Internet in Xiamen (06/02/2007) (China
Times) The information for the June 4th, 1989 incident was
transmitted through the use of big-character wall posters, newspapers and
television broadcasts. But the information for the peaceful
demonstration in Xiamen yesterday showed a different media century in which
mobile telephony and the Internet were the mainstream.

The first call to march was made through mobile phone SMS's and Internet
forums. This is not the first time that something like this has
happened, as many of the previous anti-Japanese rallies were organized the
same way.

The Xiamen government got smarter this time. Apart from blocking
Internet websites, they even filtered SMS's on sensitive keywords.
According to Xiamen citiens, there was a period of time when any SMS that
contains "Haicang PX" or "June 1st" could not be sent to
local Xiamen mobile telephones. However, people could still send those
messages outside of the Xiamen area.

But the developments yesterday showed the perfect marriage of mobile
telephony and the Internet. Certain Internet volunteers from out of
town were among the marchers and they used SMS to send reports on the march
to a "host" outside of Xiamen. The host then immediately
posted those SMS's onto an Internet website. In the face of this
combination of new media (mobile telephony and Internet), the
government/party's responses can only react slowly and ineffectively.

[005] Numbers
in Taiwan (06/02/2007) (TVBS)
In Comment 200705#108, Democratic
Progressive Party legislature candidate Lin
SHu-fen charged that her opponent Huang Jian-hui had obtained 1,000 new
telephone numbers. 150 of the telephone numbers were installed in an
empty house and the remaining 850 telephone numbers were forwarded to that
those 150 numbers. The complaint was brought to the DPP
central, which promised to investigate.

But how do they investigate?

Barring any other obstacles, it is easy. Of the 10,000 or so telephone
calls made for this poll, the following data for each telephone number will
provide a complete picture:
(1) When was this telephone installed? (e.g. the polls take place in May and
a bulk order after March is suspicious)
(2) What is the name of the registrant? (e.g. Huang Jian-hui's 1,000
telephone numbers)
(3) What telephone number, if any, is it forwarded to?

You do not need all of the listed items, but you need some of the them.

But to gather the information requires the cooperation of the Chunghwa
Telecom. The company has said no. DPP legislator Wu Bin-ray is
upset: "They came up with excuses not to cooperate with something so
easy. What is Chunghwa Telecom trying to hide? Are some of your
workers colluding with the outside?"

What is Chungwha Telecommunications' reason? Consumer privacy.
Clearly, if an individual citizen shows up and requests the above
information for a certain telephone number that is not registered under this
individual's name, then Chunghwa Telecom will decline to cooperate.
The Democratic Progressive Party is not any different from a private
citizen, and should enjoy no privileg. Chunghwa Telecom says that they
will comply with any warrant from the prosecutor's office. In order
for that to happen, someone will have to file a criminal complaint with the
prosecutor's office. The DPP may not want to do that.

There is an alternative, which is to let Chunghwa Telecom handle the data
processing (assuming the company is willing). That is, the DPP sends
over the 10,000 telephone numbers and asks for aggregate-level statistics
(e.g. the percentage that was installed after March, the percentage that
were forwarded, etc). The company would not be disclosing any
individual-level information (e.g. the name of each registrant). But
the company had better be sure that there won't be any legal problems
later. If the company is risk-aversive, they would not do that.
If I were their legal counsel, I would advise NO.

For comparison, here is what happens in the USA. The telephone company
publishes the "white pages" and "yellow pages" telephone
books in paper form, but not in electronic form. They provide a
directory service -- you can call the telephone and give the name and
address of a person, and they will provide the telephone number (this is
just a lookup of the information in the printed telephone
directories). Reverse directory inquiries are not offered (that is,
you cannot give them a telephone number and expect to get the name and
address).

But there exists a secondary market in which database marketers such as
Acxiom, Equifax and Experian actually take the printed telephone books and
enter them into computer databases. Usually, the data entry is done in
China! (because the names are in English and people who don't understand
English actually make fewer data entry errors). So if you have a
telephone number, you can go to these companies and ask for all relevant
information: the name of the registrant, the address, the number of years
that the telephone number since the first listing of the telephone, the
number of other lines registered to this name/address, etc. That is
the USA. Taiwan is different.

[004] The
New and Improved SCMP Website (06/01/2007) Doug Crets has
comments at SCMP
still holding consumers hostage -- Updated info. My comments
are shorter: I am a SCMP website subscriber and I have been accessing the
website previously without any problems. At the new and improved website, the
home page comes up fine. But as soon as I click on any link, I get:
"404 Not Found: The requested URL /hknews/index.html was not found on
this server. Apache/2.0.59 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.0.59 OpenSSL/0.9.7g
mod_jk/1.2.19 PHP/5.2.0 Server at hongkong.scmp.com Port 80." I
use Firefox v.2.0.0.4 routinely and I have my reasons for wanting to do
that. The new and improved SCMP website is accessible if I turn off
Firefox and use MS Internet Browser instead. I will be visiting the
SCMP website a lot less frequently than before.

Addendum (06/05/2007, 2:00pm HKT): I clicked on the Hong Kong news
section of SCMP again. The page became blank and
went into "loading" forever.

[003] Website
Statistics (06/01/2007) There used to be a statistical report
for website traffic at the beginning of each month based upon analyzing the
log files. For the last couple of months, it has been impossible to
run these analyses because there is not enough hard disk space on my
computer to uncompress
the log files. The web hosting service has a simple type of site
statistics report. So here is one interesting tibdbit. The May 2007 top ten search terms coming from known search
engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc) are:

My target audience is only in item #1 -- it is my honor to present to the
general public more about one of TIME magazine's 100 most influential
persons in the world. Items #5 and #8 actually exist on this
website. Since I've posted about them, there is some notional
relevance even though I suspect the visitors will be disappointed because
the posts do not match their needs.. The other seven items are practically
imcomprehensible. I don't discern any relationship and I don't
actually appreciate the visits.

Q5. Hong Kong people have a responsiblity to instigate democracy in
China?75%: yes
16%: no

Q6. Hong Kong people had a responsibility to instigate economic
development in China?82%: yes
12%: no

Q7. Hong Kong people should put more effort on instigating economic
development than democracy?44%: more economic development
26%: more democracy

Q8. Should China emphasize more on economic development than democracy?
45%: more economic development
29%: more democracy

Q9. Should the HK Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movement in
China be disbanded?21%: should be disbanded
49%: should not be disbanded

[001] Hong
Kong By The Numbers (06/01/2007) (Hong
Kong Research Association) (1,109 persons were interviewed by
telephone during May 21-28, 2007 about the 30 directly elected Legislative
Councilors. For each legco member that they recognized, they were
assign points between 1 and 6, with 1 being the poorest and 6 being the
highest).

The top scorer was Rita Fan, who is the Legco chairperson, at 3.65.
She is the only one who received a passing grade (=3.50). The poorest
score was Leung Kwok-hung (aka "Long Hair") at 2.31.

The most interesting thing here is the effect of Ma
Lik's Comments on June Fourth on his standing. Ma Lik went from a
score of 2.79 in March 2007 to 2.35 in May 2007. Meanwhile, Ma Lik's
DAB colleague Choi So-yuk who is in the same Hong Kong Island District went
from 2.84 in March 2007 to 2.47 in May 2007. Ma Lik and Choi So-yuk
are respectively the second and third lowest rated Legco members. The
legislator with the poorest rating is Leung Kwok-hung (aka "Long
Hair").